What are you reading, loving or being challenged by? We review the latest in fiction for dedicated readers and for those who wish they read more.
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Cities that are both flooded and on alert for the next storm in James Bradley’s Landfall. The body of a saint, dreamily and weirdly listening to everyone around her in Western Australia, in Josephine Rowe’s Little World. And from Malaysia, Tash Aw's The South, in which a family has left the city to head to a failing orchard, a story of longing, promise, generations, and misunderstandings
BOOKS
James Bradley, Landfall, Penguin
Josephine Rowe, Little World, Black Inc
Tash Aw, The South, Fourth Estate
GUESTS
Tegan Bennett-Daylight, novelist, teacher, and essayist, whose books include Bombora, What Falls Away, and The Details. Her latest, How to Survive 1985, is a YA novel that will be published in May
Rosa Ellen, producer and presenter with Radio National’s Arts team
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDWilla Cather, worksDavid Szalay, FleshGretchen Shirm, Out of the Woods Yuko Tsushima, Territory of Light Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Kappa Kazuo Ishiguro, A Pale View of Hills
CREDITS
Irish writer Niall Williams with Kate Evans at the 2025 Adelaide Writers Week — with a focus on his Faha novels, History of the Rain, This is Happiness and (his latest) Time of the Child.
Williams is also a screenwriter, playwright and travel writer — and his first novel, Four Letters of Love, has just been released as a film.
He also appeared onstage at AWW with Kate and Cassie, for a special edition of the Bookshelf on books, reading, and influences, with English writer Charlotte Mendelsohn and Australian writer Brian Castro.
Families, secrets, mysteries, war...Kate and Cassie read Eric Puchner’s Dream State, an American saga that spans fifty years and is set against the expansive beauty of Montana; mysterious encounters and marital strife between an actor and an art critic in New York in Katie Kitamura’s Audition, and a World War II story set in an apartment block in Brussels in Alice Austen’s 33 Place Brugmann.
BOOKS
Eric Puchner, Dream State, Sceptre
Katie Kitamura, Audition, Fern Press
Alice Austen, 33 Place Brugmann, Bloomsbury
GUESTS
Mark Mordue, music writer, journalist, poet – whose books include Boy on Fire: The Young Nick Cave. He’s also director of the Addi Road Writers Festival – a community festival in Sydney’s Marrickville – coming up on Saturday 17 May
Gretchen Shirm, novelist and literary critic – whose books include Having Cried Wolf, The Crying Room and her latest (published this month), Out of the Woods
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDJohn Irving, The World According to GarpSvetlana Alexievich, worksT.S. Eliot, GerontionLucy Sante, I Heard Her Call My NameHan Kang, We Do Not PartJames Bradley, LandfallClinton Heylin, Behind the Shades RevisitedPatrick Holland, OblivionBret Easton Ellis, Less than Zero
CREDITS
Cassie McCullagh is on leave this week, so Kate Evans and guests read Lucy Rose’s The Lamb, Laila Lalami’s The Dream Hotel, and Rachel Morton’s The Sun was Electric Light (with interview extracts from Lucy Rose on body horror and Cumbrian folk traditions, and from Rachel Morton on her move from poetry to prose).
BOOKS
Rachel Morton, The Sun was Electric Light, UQP
Lucy Rose, The Lamb, Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Laila Lalami, The Dream Hotel, Bloomsbury
GUESTS
Roanna Gonsalves, writer, academic, teacher of creative writing. Her collection of short stories, The Permanent Resident, was published in India and South Asia as, Sunita De Souza Goes To Sydney
Annie Coulthard has worked in radio and publishing – and is a dedicated reader
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale
Philip K. Dick, The Minority Report
Franz Kafka, works
Michelle de Krester, Questions of Travel; Theory and Practice
Christopher Isherwood, works
Melanie Cheng, The Burrow
Andrew Michael Hurley, Starve Acre
Elizabeth Jane Howard, We Are For the Dark
Sanya Rushdi, Hospital
Jessie Tu, The Honeyeater
Fiona McFarlane, Highway 13; The Sun Walks Down
Eileen Chong, We Speak of Flowers
CREDITS
Kate and Cassie read three new works of fiction, with the help of two guest reviewers: a novel of ideas, death, love and music, in Australian writer Andrea Goldsmith's The Buried Life; a real train derailment from the 1890s hurtles together rail workers, coffee sellers, anarcho-feminism, art and typewriters in Irish-Canadian writer Emma Donoghue's The Paris Express (read with historical novelist Natasha Lester); and rocknroll choices, career crises and friendship in Australian YA author Claire Zorn's first adult novel, Better Days (read with doco maker and academic, Anna Broinowski).
BOOKS
Andrea Goldsmith, The Buried Life, Transit Lounge
Emma Donoghue, The Paris Express, Picador
Claire Zorn, Better Days, Atlantic Books
GUESTS
Natasha Lester, historical novelist whose books include A Kiss from Mr Fitzgerald, The Paris Seamstress and The French Photographer. Her latest novel — her ninth — is The Mademoiselle Alliance, and it was published last week
Anna Broinowski is a documentary maker, memoirist and academic at Sydney College of the Arts. Her books include Datsun Angel: A true-story adventure inside the savage heart of 1980s Australia and Please Explain: The rise and fall and rise again of Pauline Hanson. She also works on the films of North Korea and the impact of deep fakes
Other books mentioned in the discussion:
Sarah Wynne-Williams, Careless People
Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
Yael van der Wouden, The Safekeep
Cameron Stewart, Why do Horses Run
Walter Isaacson, Elon Musk
Douglas Rushkoff, Survival of the Richest
CREDITS
• Presenter: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh
• Producer: Kate Evans, Sarah Corbett
• Sound engineers: Emrys Cronin, Simon Branthwaite
• Executive producer: Rhiannon Brown
Kate and Cassie discuss bestselling American writer Curtis Sittenfeld’s sharp and observant collection of short stories Show Don’t Tell; You Am I frontman Tim Rogers reads First Name Second Name, an excellent debut from Queensland novelist Steve MinOn, and the ABC’s own Zan Rowe (of Triple J, Double J and Take 5 fame) shares her thoughts on Scottish singer-songwriter (from Belle and Sebastian) Stuart Murdoch’s Nobody’s Empire, a case of life inspiring art.
BOOKS
Curtis Sittenfeld, Show Don’t Tell, Doubleday
Stuart Murdoch, Nobody’s Empire: A Novel, Faber
Steve MinOn, First Name Second Name, UQP
GUESTS
Tim Rogers, lead singer with You Am I and The Hard-Ons, about to launch into a You Am I tour celebrating 30 years of the Hi Fi Way album. Author of Detours
Zan Rowe, Double J’s Music Correspondent and host of Friday Mornings; presenter of Take 5
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED
Andrew O'Hagan, Mayflies
Robbie Arnott, Dusk
Hannah Kent, works
Lech Blaine, Australian Gospel
Helen Garner, The Season; Monkey Grip
Geraldine Brooks, Memorial Days; Horse
Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
Jennifer Homans, Mr. B
Ronald Hugh Morrieson, The Scarecrow
Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
CREDITS
This week’s novels takes us to Zanzibar, Budapest and Renaissance Florence with Nobel Prize-winning English-Tanzanian writer Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Theft; while guest reviewers Tim Ayliffe reads Laurent Binet’s Perspectives; and Siang Lu reads David Szalay’s Flesh.
BOOKS
Abdulrazak Gurnah, Theft, Bloomsbury
Laurent Binet, Perspectives (translated from the French by Sam Taylor), Harvill Secker
David Szalay, Flesh, Jonathan Cape
GUESTS
Tim Ayliffe, journalist and crime writer – whose John Bailey series include the books The Enemy Within, Killer Traitor Spy, and The Wrong Man
Siang Lu, writes for film and TV and is also the author of the books Ghost Cities and The Whitewash
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDMichael Connelly, works Leon Uris, worksJohn Le Carre, worksStephen King, worksAndrew O'Hagan, Caledonian Road; MayfliesNick Cave and Swan O'Hagan, Faith, Hope and Carnage Sara Foster, When She Was GoneCamille Booker, The Woman in the WavesNatasha Rai, An Onslaught of LightSteve MinOn, First Name Second Name
This edition of the Bookshelf was recorded on stage at Adelaide Writers' Week on Sunday 2 March – with Irish writer Niall Williams (Time of the Child), English writer Charlotte Mendelson (Wife) and all the way from the Adelaide Hills, Australian writer Brian Castro (Chinese Postman). How and when do they do their best reading, what have books meant to them, what are their influences and touchstones? With a surprising swerve or to into the bath and to the funeral of a beloved author.
BOOKS MENTIONED
Laurence Sterne, works
James Joyce, works, Ulysses
Samuel Beckett, works
P. W. Joyce, English As We Speak It in Ireland
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations; Bleak House
W.G.Sebald, Rings of Saturn; Austerlitz
Thomas Bernhard, works
Helen Garner, Diaries; The Children's Bach; Monkey Grip
Edna O'Brien, The Country Girls; Memoir
Hermann Broch, The Death of Virgil
Salvatore Satta, The Day of Judgment
Samantha Harvey, Orbital
Ceridwen Dovey, Only the Astronauts
Louise Glück, works
Anne Carson, works
Jelena Dinic, works
Alistair MacLeod, Ireland and Other Stories
John McGahern, Amongst Women
Percival Everett, James
Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall
James McBride, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store
Patrick Lane, There is a Season
Alba de Céspedes, works
Elena Ferrante, works
Four women’s lives intertwined between Africa and the USA in Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Dream Count. Plus, secrets and trauma in the South of France in Australian novelist Diana Reid’s new one, Signs of Damage; and into the Swedish wilderness to observe a group of seven unlikely people in indie musician turned novelist Annika Norlin’s Colony.
BOOKS
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dream Count, Fourth Estate
Diana Reid, Signs of Damage, Ultimo Press
Annika Norlin, Colony, (translated from the Swedish by Alice E. Olsson), Scribe
GUESTS
Peter Polites, Western Sydney writer whose books include the novels Down the Hume and The Pillars, and the memoir-fiction hybrid, God Forgets About the Poor
Stephanie Smee is a translator who works from French into English and whose translations include Hannelore Cayre’s The Godmother, Helene Gaudy’s A World with No Shore and Marie-Helene La Fon’s The Son’s Story
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDChimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun; AmericanaDiana Reid, Love and Virtue; Seeing Other PeopleFiona McGregor, Chemical Palace; IrisJames Parker, Get Me Through the Next Five Minutes: Odes to Being Alive
CREDITS
Irish writer Colum McCann’s Twist dives deep under the ocean and takes on a charismatic mystery; 2024 Nobel Prize winner Han Kang’s We Do Not Part explores massacres on Jeju Island during (and after) the Korean War, stories actively repressed by both the South Korean and American governments; and Australian novelist Charlotte McConaghy’s Wild Dark Shore takes us to a fictional island between Tasmania and Antarctica, inhabited only by a man and his three children.
BOOKS
Colum McCann, Twist, Bloomsbury
Han Kang, We Do Not Part (translated from Korean by e. yaewon & Page Aniyah Morris), Hamish Hamilton
Charlotte McConaghy, Wild Dark Shore, Penguin Random House
GUESTS
Beejay Silcox, critic, essayist and regular onstage interviewer of writers. Until last week – Director of the Canberra Writers Festival
Bernadette Brennan, literary scholar and judge, whose books include literary biographies of Australian Helen Garner and Gillian Mears
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Susannah Clarke, Piranesi
Sarah Manguso, Liars
Alba de Céspedes, No Turning Back
CREDITS
An examination of family dynamics through three novels...Adam Haslett’s Mothers and Sons reflects on unspoken stories and familial divides; The Boy from the Sea by Garrett Carr, set in 1970s Ireland, tells the story of a family that takes in a child washed ashore, and Robert Lukins’ Somebody Down There Likes Me depicts an uber-rich family who gather together as their wealth and corruption begin to unravel.
BOOKS
Adam Haslett, Mothers and Sons, Hamish Hamilton
Robert Lukins, Somebody Down There Likes Me, Allen & Unwin
Garrett Carr, The Boy from the Sea, Picador
GUESTS
Claire Mabey, founder of NZ’s Verb Wellington literary organisation and writers’ festival; books editor at The Spinoff; writer whose middle-grade children’s book The Raven's Eye Runaways was published last year. And, here's a link to the NZ book awards Claire mentions: https://www.nzbookawards.nz/new-zealand-book-awards/)
Jonty Claypole, CEO Red Room Poetry; co-host of podcast The Secret Life of Books; author, Words Fail Us: In Defence of Disfluency
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDPercival Everett, JamesCharles Dickens, David CopperfieldBarbara Kingsolver, Demon CopperheadSamantha Harvey, OrbitalRobert Lukins, The Everlasting Sunday; LovelandF. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great GatsbyHerman Melville, Moby DickShakespeare, HamletEvelyn Waugh, Brideshead RevisitedAudrey Magee, The ColonyPaul Murray, The Bee StingPaul Lynch, Prophet SongColm Toibin, worksNiall Williams, Time of the ChildFiona McFarlane, The Sun Walks DownJames Baldwin, Giovanni's RoomJane Austen, Pride and PrejudiceMarilynne Robinson, GileadSusannah Clarke, PiranesiDamien Wilkins, DeliriousHarriet Baker, Rural Hours
CREDITS
Alaska, folktales and mothers and daughters in Eowyn Ivey's Black Woods Blue Sky. Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Anne Tyler is back with Three Days in June, another novel about mothers and daughters; and Italian novelist Vincenzo Latronico's Perfection, a critique of social media and contemporary life.
BOOKS
Eowyn Ivey, Black Woods, Blue Sky, Tinder Press
Anne Tyler, Three Days in June, Chatto & Windus
Vincenzo Latronico, Perfection (translated from the Italian by Sophie Hughes), Text
GUESTS
Alice Pung, novelist, memoirist and editor. Her books include Unpolished Gem, Laurinda and One Hundred Days
Dylin Hardcastle, novelist, artist and screenwriter, currently completing their PhD. Their novels include Below Deck and A Language of Limbs
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDEowyn Ivey, The Snow ChildJohn Marsden, worksAnne Tyler, worksJazz Money, Mark the DawnDavid Owen Kelly, Host CityKirsty Jagger, RoseghettoWeike Wang, Joan is Okay
CREDITS
A story of yearning, belonging, secrets and identity from Native America in Morgan Talty’s Fire Exit; rusted robots, prosthetic limbs, AI and noisy families in Nigerian-American writer Nnedi Okorafor’s Death of the Author; and coercive control and walking on eggshells in Irish writer Roisín O’Donnell’s Nesting; and a brief foray into the world of ‘romantasy’ and the international bestseller Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros.
BOOKS
Morgan Talty, Fire Exit, Scribe
Rebecca Yarros, Onyx Storm [Book three in the Fourth Wing/Empyrean series], Piatkus
Nnedi Okorafor, Death of the Author, Gollancz
Roisín O’Donnell, Nesting, Scribner
GUESTS
Bruce Isaacs, Associate Professor of Film Studies at the University of Sydney; and co-host of the podcast Film Versus Film
Sarah Gilbert, journalist, Executive Producer, Impact Studios, University of Technology, Sydney. Her latest book is Unconventional Women: The Story of the last Blessed Sacrament Sisters in Australia. She is currently writing a biblio-memoir set in Buenos Aires, and has a podcast coming with Sydney Review of Books called Fully Lit
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED
Nikki May, Wahala
Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
Iain Pears, An Instance of the Fingerpost
Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose
Elizabeth Jane Howard, The Cazalet Chronicles
Elsa Morante, Lies and Sorcery
Elene Ferrante, works
CREDITS
Cassie and Kate read Marie-Hélène Lafon’s The Son’s Story, a family story that spans the twentieth-century, full of melancholy beauty and secrets. Crime writer Hayley Scrivenor reads Geoff Parkes’ When the Deep Dark Bush Swallows You Whole, a story of small towns, envy and threat in New Zealand; and documentary maker Johan Gabrielsson reads Swedish bestseller The Group, by Sigge Eklund, in which art, sun, wealth and beautiful people meet and mingle in Madrid.
BOOKS
Marie-Hélène Lafon, The Son’s Story (translated from the French by Stephanie Smee), MLP
Geoff Parkes, When the Deep Dark Bush Swallows You Whole, Penguin Random House
Sigge Eklund, The Group (translated from the Swedish by Rachel Willson-Broyles), Ithaka Press
GUESTS
Hayley Scrivenor, crime writer whose books are Dirt Town and – her latest – Girl Falling
Johan Gabrielsson, documentary maker: longtime Australian resident, he was born in Sweden
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED
Mary McCarthy, The Group
Patricia Highsmith, The Talented Mr Ripley
Ashley Kalagian Blunt, Cold Truth
Sara Foster, When She Was Gone
Samantha Byres, Dead Ends
James Bridle, Ways of Being
Slavoj Zizek, Too Late To Awaken
CREDITS
Kate and Cassie are back for 2025!
In this episode, a discussion of Panic by Catherine Jinks, about a young woman looking for a fresh start after posting a drunken rant that went horrifically viral. Novelist George Haddad, and Professor Sue Turnbull, who specialises in crime drama and fiction, are also along, to take a look at new novels by Miles Franklin winner Shankari Chandran and American author Garth Greenwell.
BOOKS
Catherine Jinks, Panic, Text
Garth Greenwell, Small Rain, Picador
Shankari Chandran, Unfinished Business, Ultimo Press
GUESTS
George Haddad, novelist, artist and lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Western Sydney. His novel Losing Face was published in 2022
Sue Turnbull, Professor of Communication and Media at the University of Wollongong, who specialises in crime drama and fiction. She is also chief crime fiction reviewer for The Age and SMH
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDKaliane Bradley, The Ministry of TimeAlice Winn, In MemoriamRichard J. Evans, Hitler's PeopleGeorge Eliot, MiddlemarchCaroline Darian, I'll Never Call Him Dad Again: Turning our family trauma of Chemical Submission into a collective fightCurtis Sittenfeld, Show Don't Tell; Romantic Comedy; EligibleGarth Greenwell, CleannessShankari Chandran, Chai Time at Cinnamon GardensKatherine Brabon, Body FriendBen Watt, Patient Alexandros Papadiamantis, The MurderessMichelle de Kretser, Theory and PracticeRonni Salt, Gunnawah Ashley Kalagian Blunt, Cold Truth; Dark ModeKatherena Vermette, The Stranger family trilogy
CREDITS
Reading Percival Everett's James, Dylin Hardcastle's Language of Limbs and James McBride's The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store
Cassie and literary interviewer Michaela Kalowski discussed Percival Everett's James in a conversation first broadcast on 15 March 2024
Kate and Jonathan Green reviewed Dylin Hardcastle's Language of Limbs on 19 July 2024
And James McBride spoke to Kate about The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store for Radio National's 2024 Big Weekend of Books
Books you might have missed: from England, Turkey and within the Australian Tongan community
Cassie and critic Beejay Silcox agree to disagree over David Nicholls' You Are Here – from a conversation first broadcast on 19 April 2024
Kate, Richard Aedy and writer Patrick Carey reviewed Oisín McKenna, Evenings and Weekends on 28 June 2024
Cassie, Beejay Silcox and academic Jioji Ravulo read Winnie Dunn's Dirt Poor Islanders on 19 April 2024
And Cassie spoke to Turkish-British author Elif Shafak ahead of the publication of her novel There Are Rivers in the Sky, on Radio National's 2024 Big Weekend of Books
Time to reassess your TBR pile – To Be Read, that is – ready for 2025. To help, some of the best books and literary discussions from the past year.
Kate and Cassie's review of Rita Bullwinkel's Headshot was first broadcast on 16 August 2024
Kate and Richard Aedy's discussion of Catherine McKinnon's To Sing of War was first broadcast on 28 June 2024
Cassie and Kate first delved into Rodney Hall's Vortex on 22 August 2024
Ready for some Big Books? Ambition, money, philosophy, bodies and history – all explored through history.
Cassie and Tom Wright's review of Andrew O'Hagan's Caledonian Road was first broadcast on 28 March 2024
Kate and Cassie with Polish publicist Anna O'Grady, on Olga Tokarczuk's The Empusium, was first broadcast on 20 September 2024
English writer Francis Spufford spoke to Kate about his novel Cahokia Jazz on Radio National's Big Weekend of Books in June 2024
Catch up on the best books and discussions about them from the last year. A songwriter, a plaintive guitar, time travel and a motel are all in the mix.
Kate and Cassie's review of Willie Vlautin's Horse was originally was originally broadcast on 26 July 2024
Cassie and Jonathan Green's appraisal of Kaliane Bradley's Ministry of Time was originally broadcast on 30 May 2024
Kate, Kate Mildenhall and Beejay Silcox disagreed over Miranda July's All Fours back on 21 June 2024
And bookseller David Gaunt and NZ Festival Director Claire Mabey gave their book recommendations on 26 July 2024
Detectives, tea ladies, journos, psychologists – what's the appeal of the crime series and repeat protagonist? Kate Evans with crime writers Michael Robotham, Tim Ayliffe and Amanda Hampson onstage at the BAD Sydney Crime Festival.
GUESTS
Michael Robotham, internationally bestselling crime writer, whose books include the Joe O'Loughlin series and the Cyrus Haven series. His latest is Storm Child.
Tim Ayliffe, journalist and novelist, whose central character is also a media man. John Bailey is his name – and the latest book in that series is The Wrong Man.
Amanda Hampson is an author of many novels, whose crime novels, set in the 1960s, feature tea ladies. Her latest is The Cryptic Clue.
CRIME SERIES MENTIONED IN THE DISCUSSION
Ian Rankin, Rebus series
Michael Connelly, Bosch and McEvoy series
Anne Cleeves, Vera series
Janet Evanovitch, Stephanie Plum series
Kerry Greenwood, Phryne Fischer series
Stieg Larsson, Lisbeth Salander series
Peter Høeg, Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow
Stephen King's Holly Gibney series
Patricia Cornwall's Kay Scarpetta series
Mick Herron's Slow Horses
Tom Clancy, works
Peter Temple's Jack Irish series
John Le Carre, works
Jack Beaumont, Frenchman series
Walter Mosley, Easy Rawlins series
Adrian McKinty, Sean Duffy series
Sulari Gentill, Rowland Sinclair series
Candice Fox, works
Sujata Massey, Perveen Mistry series
Chris Hammer, works
Candice Fox, works
Don Winslow, works
Presenter: Kate Evans
Producer: Kate Evans + Sarah Corbett
Sound engineers: John Jacobs + Tegan Nicholls
Executive Producer: Rhiannon Brown
The best books of 2024 as selected by Cassie McCullagh, Kate Evans, Jason Steger, Lev Grossman and Michaela Kalowski. Keep scrolling for a full (and somewhat idiosyncratic) list.
GUESTS
Jason Steger, literary journalist. Former literary editor at the Age and SMH; and regular guest on ABC TV's Tuesday Book Club.
Lev Grossman, bestselling American novelist and journalist — whose books include The Magicians trilogy and (his latest), The Bright Sword (an Arthurian tale).
Michaela Kalowski, literary interviewer and the curator of Radio National's Big Weekend of Books
BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS
(listed according to the person who made the recommendation)
Lev Grossman:
Percival Everett, James
Paolo Bacigalupi, Navola
Tana French, The Hunter
Kate Atkinson, Death at the Sign of the Rook
M.T. Anderson, Nicked
Karl Ove Knausgaard, The Third Realm
Nick Harkaway, Karla's Choice
Cassie McCullagh:
Percival Everett, James
Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry of Time
Francis Spufford, Cahokia Jazz
Ceridwen Dovey, Only the Astronauts
Michaela Kalowski's selection (in categories)
Uplifting (subject matter or style):
Ailsa Piper, For Life
Julia Baird, Bright Shining
International:
Percival Everett, James
Francis Spufford, Cahokia Jazz
Australian:
Robbie Arnott, Dusk
Lexi Freiman, The Book of Ayn
Tim Winton, Juice
Catherine McKinnon, To Sing of War
James Bradley, Deep Water
Julian Borger, I Seek a Kind Person
Books in Translation:
Greek Lessons by Han Kang
Fantasy:
Kelly Link, The Book of Love
Jason Steger
Uplifting/ positive:
Colm Tóibín, Long Island
Melanie Cheng, The Burrow
Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry of Time
Other highlights
Nick Harkaway, Karla's Choice
Helen Garner, The Season
Samantha Harvey, Orbital
Heather Taylor Johnson, Little Bit
Kate Evans
Positive/ Joy or beauty:
Niall Williams, Time of the Child
Hanif Kureishi, Shattered
Deborah Levy, the Position of Spoons
International:
Francis Spufford, Cahokia Jazz
Alan Hollinghurst, Our Evenings
Richard Powers, Playground
In translation:
Olga Tokarczuk, The Empusium
Australian:
Fiona McFarlane, Highway 13
Dylin Hardcastle, A Language of Limbs
Catherine McKinnon, To Sing of War
Robbie Arnott, Dusk
Inga Simpson, The Thinning
CREDITS
Presenters: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullagh
Producer: Kate Evans, Sarah Corbett
Sound engineers: Craig Tilmouth, Ann Marie Debettencor
Executive Producer: Rhiannon Brown
What do Kate and Cassie make of Will Self’s Elaine, a portrait of a frustrated fifties housewife, based on his mother's own diaries. Plus, The City and its Uncertain Walls, the much anticipated new novel by Haruki Murakami with a dreamy library in a parallel universe at its centre; and Rosalia Aguilar Solace’s The Great Library of Tomorrow, another novel set in an alternate world that pays tribute to libraries.
BOOKS
Will Self, Elaine, Grove Press
Haruki Murakami, The City and its Uncertain Walls (translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel), Harvill Secker
Rosalia Aguilar Solace, The Great Library of Tomorrow, Text
GUESTS
Jon Page, long-time bookseller. General Manager, Dymocks, Sydney CBD store
C.S. Pacat, writer whose books include the Dark Rise and Captive Prince series, and the graphic novel Fence series.
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED
Stephanie Meyers, Twilight seriesSamantha Harvey, OrbitalAsako Yuzuki, ButterGenevieve Cogman, Invisible LibrariesJorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel; Labyrinths Anne Rice, The Vampire ChroniclesChristine Dwyer Hickey, Our London Lives Colum McCann, Apeirogon; Twist
CREDITS
Presenter: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullaghProducer: Kate Evans, Sarah CorbettSound engineer: Craig Tilmouth, Beth StewartExecutive producer, Rhiannon Brown
A focus on literature in translation with special guests Bora Chung and Anton Hur, both of whom are South Korean authors and translators, who translate each others' work, and write outside the system of state-sanctioned literature. Anton translates from Korean into English; Bora translates Russian and Polish works into Korean. In this episode, they describe each others' work, discuss translation, give recommendations, and respond to fellow South Korean writer Han Kang's Nobel Prize in literature.
We also meet Chinese podcaster and translator Yu Shi, who has translated Margaret Atwood and Jeanette Winterson's fiction into Mandarin.
GUESTS
Bora Chung, lecturer, fiction writer and translator from South Korea, who translates from Russian and Polish into Korean. Her books include Cursed Bunny (which was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize), Your Utopia and Grocery List
Anton Hur, novelist and translator. He translates from Korean into English. His books are Toward Eternity and No One Told Me Not To. He also translated the global phenomenon I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokpokki by Baek Se-hee
Yu Shi, Chinese podcaster and translator
Bora Chung and Anton Hur were in Australia as guests of the Korean Cultural Centre
ALL BOOKS MENTIONEDHan Kang, The Vegetarian; Human Acts; Greek Lessons; We Do Not PartFyodor Dostoevsky, worksBruno Jasieński, worksBruno Schulz, worksOlga Tokarczuk, worksStanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, worksWitold Gombrowicz, worksMargaret Atwood, The Testaments; The Handmaid’s TaleJeanette Winterson, Oranges are Not the Only FruitStephen King, worksPaul Auster, worksMishima Yukio, works
CREDITS
Derided, disparaged and cursed to the heavens, book critics are depicted as literature’s grand villains – as frustrated creators and gleeful wreckers. But what do critics really do? And why are they necessary for a healthy literary ecosystem? James Jiang, Beejay Silcox and Christos Tsiolkas join Kate and Cassie as part of a panel discussion at Canberra Writers' Festival - five Aussie critics - making the case for criticism.
Niall Williams’ Time of the Child might just be the big ‘feel-good book of the year’—but there’s more to it than that. This is a beautifully written Irish story, full of ordinary lives described in painfully funny detail. Also, Scottish writer Ali Smith and her too-real-to-be-allegorical Gliff; and in Alan Moore's The Great When, we're presented with a hallucinatory vision of an alternative London, anchored in post-World War ll realism.
BOOKS
Ali Smith, Gliff, Hamish Hamilton
Alan Moore, The Great When, Bloomsbury
Niall Williams, Time of the Child, Bloomsbury
GUESTS
Garth Nix, sci-fi and fantasy writer whose books include the Old Kingdom series, Angel Mage , and The Left-Handed Booksellers of London; his latest is a middle-grade novel, We Do Not Welcome Our Ten-Year-Old Overlord
Chris Hammer, crime writer whose books include Scrublands, Silver, and The Tilt. His latest, featuring his characters Nell Buchanan and Ivan Lucic is The Valley
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDKazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me GoAldous Huxley, Brave New WorldClaire Keegan, Small Things Like TheseFintan O'Toole, We Don't Know OurselvesLarry McMurtry, Lonesome DoveChris Whittaker, We Begin at the EndC.S. Robertson, The Trials of Marjorie Crowe
CREDITS
The Dressmaker’s backstory, a universe of stars to expand our ideas about nature writing, and fragments and tricks galore: Kate and Cassie read Inga Simpson’s The Thinning, Brian Castro’s Chinese Postman and Rosalie Ham’s Molly with guests Ella Jeffery and Amanda HampsonBOOKSInga Simpson, The Thinning, HachetteBrian Castro, Chinese Postman, GiramondoRosalie Ham, Molly, PicadorGUESTSDr Ella Jeffery, poet and lecturer in Creative Writing at Griffith University, Qld; ABC Radio National ‘Top 5 Arts’ candidate; currently examining insecure housing as a theme in 21st-century literatureAmanda Hampson, novelist whose latest series feature tea ladies in 1960s Sydney . . . solving crime. The first, The Tea Ladies, won the 2024 Danger Award for Best Crime Novel. The second is The Cryptic Clue; and the third – The Deadly Dispute – will be published in April 2025. There will be five in the series.Other books mentioned:Patricia Wrightson, The Nargun and the StarsJohn Marsden, Tomorrow when the War BeganJames Bradley, Deep Water: The World in the OceanRichard Powers, PlaygroundRobert C. O’Brien, Z for ZachariahCormac McCarthy, The Road Miles Franklin, My Brilliant CareerA B Facey, A Fortunate LifeMarcus Clarke, For the Term of His Natural LifeRuth Park, works Helen Garner, WorksJohn Birmingham, He Died with a Felafel in his HandAndrew McGahan, worksBernadette Brennan, Brain Castro’s Fiction: The Seductive Play of Language
CREDITS
Presenter: Kate Evans, Cassie McCullaghProducer: Kate Evans, Sarah CorbettSound engineer: Harvey O'Sullivan, Peter Climpson, Emrys CroninExecutive producer, Rhiannon Brown
The latest from double Miles Franklin Award winner, Michelle de Kretser, Theory and Practice, a novel that evokes the 1980s and Virginia Woolf. Scottish writer Graeme Macrae Burnet plays a French literary game in A Case of Matricide; and summer days under the light of a strange star in Norway in Karl Ove Knausgaard’s The Third Realm.
BOOKS
Graeme Macrae Burnet, A Case of Matricide, Text
Michelle de Kretser, Theory & Practice, Text
Karl Ove Knausgaard, The Third Realm, (Translated from the Norwegian by Martin Aitken), Harvill Secker
GUESTS
Clare Monagle, Professor of Mediaeval History, Macquarie University – who specialises in the history of ideas, and theology in the Middle Ages
Mark Mordue, freelance music writer and poet whose latest book is the biography, Boy on Fire - The Young Nick Cave. He is also co-director of the Addi Road Writers Festival
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED Daphne du Maurier, RebeccaHelen Garner, worksC.J. Sansom, Shardlake seriesUmberto Eco, The Name of the Rose Jack Gilbert, Collected PoemsJuno Gemes, Until Justice Comes: Fifty Years of the Movement for Indigenous Rights
CREDITS
Kate and Cassie read Melanie Cheng’s The Burrow, a pandemic-set novella that details the healing powers of a pet rabbit for a family dealing with tragedy. Plus, Native American writer Louise Erdrich’s The Mighty Red, a beautifully crafted novel about a love triangle and everyday life in a farming community in North Dakota, and the latest from Yuwaalaraay storyteller Nardi Simpson, The Belburd, a poetic montage of life and death.
BOOKS
Melanie Cheng, The Burrow, Text
Louise Erdrich, The Mighty Red, Corsair
Nardi Simpson, The Belburd, Hachette
GUESTS
Steph Harmon, Culture Editor, The Guardian
Tom Wright, theatre writer and adaptor; Associate Director, Belvoir Theatre
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDNardi Simpson, Song of the CrocodileEmeric Pressburger, The Glass PearlsClaire Kilroy, Soldier SailorAlan Murrin, The Coast Road Dan Hogan, Secret Third Thing
CREDIT
Twins, pumas and a colonial western in Robbie Arnott’s Dusk; gay lives, racial politics, class, theatre and exquisite writing, in Alan Hollinghurst’s Our Evenings; and writing between the myths, rumours and religious speculation of a mediaeval woman pope in Emily Maguire's Rapture.
BOOKS
Robbie Arnott, Dusk, Picador
Alan Hollinghurst, Our Evenings, Picador
Emily Maguire, Rapture, Allen & Unwin
GUESTS
Huw Griffiths, Associate Professor of English Literature, University of Sydney – with a special interest in Shakespeare and contemporary gay literature. His books include Disavowing Authority in the Shakespeare Classroom and Shakespeare’s Body Parts: Figuring Sovereignty in the History Plays
Meredith Lake, presents Soul Search on ABC Radio National as well as Mornings on ABC Alice Springs. She is also a historian of religion, whose latest book is The Bible in Australia: A Cultural History
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDJon Ransom, The GallopersMax Porter, worksCynan Jones, worksArelhekenhe Angkentye - Women’s Talk, Poems of Lyapirtneme from Arrernte Women in Central AustraliaKim Mahood, Craft for a Dry Lake; Position Doubtful; Wandering with Intent
CREDITS
The Bookshelf is a program for dedicated readers and those who wished they read more.
Many people have been awaiting the release of Intermezzo, the latest book by Irish writer Sally Rooney, which explores love, grief, growing up, playing chess, understanding and misunderstanding family...Kate and Cassie begin the show with this one, with additional input from millennial author Madeleine Gray. Also, under the sea with Richard Powers in his new novel Playground; and searching the American South with Gayl Jones in The Unicorn Woman, with guidance from historian Ethan Blue.
BOOKS
Sally Rooney, Intermezzo, Faber
Richard Powers, Playground, Hutchinson Heinemann
Gayl Jones, The Unicorn Woman, Virago
GUESTS
Madeleine Gray, critic and writer whose debut novel, Green Dot, was published in 2023 and is now being adapted for screen. Winner of the Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year at the 2024 ABIAs
Ethan Blue, Associate Professor of History at the University of W.A., where he specialises in histories of punishment, migration and incarceration. Author of The Deportation Express: A History of America through Forced Removal https://www.ucpress.edu/books/the-deportation-express/hardcover
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDBonnie Garmus, Lessons in ChemistryReginald Rose, Twelve Angry MenMiriam Toews, Women TalkingJulia Langbein, American MermaidRosemarie Garland-Thomson, Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body Neil Stephenson, Termination ShockEleanor Catton. Birnam WoodZora Neal Hurston, There Eyes are Watching GodLangston Hughes, worksW.E.B. Du Bois, worksRichard Wright, worksElla Baxter, Woo WooAnne Carson, Eros the BittersweetPercival Everett, JamesIvan Chaar Lopez, The Cybernetic Border: Drones, Technology, and IntrusionFelicity Amaya Schaeffer, Unsettled Borders: The Militarized Science of Surveillance on Sacred Indigenous LandsFrederick Jamieson, The Political UnconsciousMargaret Drabble, worksThomas Hardy, works
CREDITS
CREDITS
Novels from France, Poland and India – with politics, sanatoriums, automata and horror in the mix too. Kate and Cassie read French writer (and provocateur) Michel Houellebecq’s Annihilation (but can they get to the end of the book? There’s the question); while Polish reader and publicist Anna O’Grady joins them to discuss Nobel Prize winning writer Olga Tokarczuk’s The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story; and academic, novelist and memoirist Kári Gislason joins them to review Tania James’ Loot.
BOOKS
Michel Houellebecq, Annihilation, Picador
Olga Tokarczuk, The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story, Text
Tania James, Loot, Harvill Secker
GUESTS
Anna O’Grady, Publicity Director, Simon & Schuster. Born in Poland, both her parents and grandparents were connected with the Polish publishing industry
Kári Gislason, Professor in Creative Writing & Literary Studies, Queensland University of Technology. His books include The Promise of Iceland, the novel The Sorrow Stone and Saga Land (co-authored with Richard Fidler). His latest is the memoir Running with Pirates
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDThomas Mann, The Magic MountainSamantha Harvey, OrbitalCarys Davis, ClearJennifer Croft, The Extinction of Irena ReyDebra Dank, We Come With This PlaceTegan Bennett Daylight, The DetailsGerald Durrell, My Family and Other AnimalsKarl Over Knausgaard, My Struggle seriesAnna Jacobson, How to Knit a Human
CREDITS
Sex parties, corruption and dark dark deeds in not-quite-Nigeria, in Akwaeke Emezi’s Little Rot; aspiration, real estate and misguided philanthropists in New York, in Rumaan Alam’s Entitlement, and ordinary people living extraordinary lives, and all those untold stories, in Elizabeth Strout’s Tell Me Everything.
GUESTS
Gretchen Shirm, critic and writer whose books include the short story collection Having Cried Wolf and the novels Where the Light Falls and The Crying Room.
Stephen Long, Senior Fellow at the independent policy research organisation, The Australia Institute. Before that he was a senior reporter for the ABC’s investigative journalism program, Four Corners, as economics correspondent and national finance correspondent.
BOOKS
Akwaeke Emezi, Little Rot, Faber Rumaan Alam, Entitlement, Riverhead Books Elizabeth Strout, Tell Me Everything, Viking Penguin
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDBarbara Kingsolver, Demon CopperheadTaffy Brodesser-Akner , Long Island CompromisePorochista Khakpour, TehrangelesAndrew O'Hagan, Caledonian RoadAlice Robinson, If You GoSusie Boyt, Love and MissedPaul Lynch, Prophet SongJoseph Stiglitz, The Road to Freedom - Economics and the Good Society
CREDITS
A peripatetic hotel, a paddle steamer of dreams and a dastardly law firm, in Jock Serong’s Cherrywood; one of the 20th century’s top 10 all-star ‘leading’ murderers, and what it might mean to be close to him, in Malcolm Knox’s The First Friend; and spies, caves, lies and Neanderthals in Rachel Kushner’s Creation Lake.
BOOKS
Malcolm Knox, The First Friend, Allen & Unwin
Jock Serong, Cherrywood, Fourth Estate
Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake, Jonathan Cape
GUESTS
Roanna Gonsalves, creative writing academic, writer whose books include the short story collection The Permanent Resident
Tom Wright, theatre writer and adapter; artistic associate, the Belvoir Theatre
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDPeter Carey, worksJoseph Conrad, Heart of DarknessJames Bradley, Ghost SpeciesJon Baptiste del Amo, Son of ManMichelle de Kretser, Theory and PracticeWilliam Dalrymple, The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the WorldJosé Saramago, The Elephant's JourneyAdalbert Stifter, The BachelorsJonathan Raban, Soft City
CREDITS
An overview of the books of the year so far, what’s coming up for the rest of the year, and the 'to be read' book pile of regret as Kate and Cassie confess all with bookseller Jon Page and literary interviewer and editor of The Monthly Michael Williams.
BOOKS MENTIONED BY CASSIEPercival Everett, JamesCeridwen Dovey, Only the AstronautsIain Ryan, The StripGabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry of TimeFrancis Spufford, Cahokia JazzElizabeth Strout, Tell Me EverythingRobbie Arnott, worksTim Winton, Juice
BOOKS MENTIONED BY JON PAGESarah J. Maas, Court of Thorns seriesRebecca Yarros, The Empyrean seriesTéa Obreht, The MorningsideMurray Middleton, No Church in the WildGarry Disher, worksJane Harper, The DryChris Hammer, worksChristian White, worksHayley Scrivenor, worksMichael Robotham, worksPeter Temple, worksBarbara Kingsolver, worksHaruki Murakami, worksNagi, Recipe Tin Eats cookbooksJock Serong, CherrywoodElizabeth Strout, Tell Me EverythingTim Winton, JuiceCormac McCarthy, The RoadKaliane Bradley, The Ministry of Time
BOOKS MENTIONED BY KATEFrancis Spufford, Cahokia JazzRodney Hall, VortexDylin Hardcastle, A Language of LimbsFiona McFarlane, Highway 13Catherine McKinnon, To Sing of WarAndrew O'Hagan, Caledonian RoadOlga Tokarczuk, The EmpusiumLouise Erdrich, The Mighty RedJames McBride, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
BOOKS MENTIONED BY MICHAEL WILLIAMSMelissa Lucashenko, EdenglassieTony Birch, Women and ChildrenKate Grenville, Dolly MaunderJonathan Lethem, Brooklyn Crime NovelRebecca Makkai, The Great BelieversNam Le, 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese PoemRichard Osman, We Solve Murders seriesSally Rooney, IntermezzoHelen Garner, The SeasonMelanie Cheng, The Burrow
An overview of the books of the year so far, what’s coming up for the rest of the year, and the 'to be read' book pile of regret as Kate and Cassie confess all with bookseller Jon Page and literary interviewer and editor of The Monthly Michael Williams.
BOOKS MENTIONED BY CASSIEPercival Everett, JamesCeridwen Dovey, Only the AstronautsIain Ryan, The StripGabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry of TimeFrancis Spufford, Cahokia JazzElizabeth Strout, Tell Me EverythingRobbie Arnott, DuskTim Winton, Juice
BOOKS MENTIONED BY JON PAGESarah J. Maas, Court of Thorns seriesRebecca Yarros, The Empyrean seriesJonathan Lethem, Brooklyn Crime NovelTéa Obreht, The MorningsideMurray Middleton, No Church in the WildGarry Disher, worksJane Harper, The DryChris Hammer, worksChristian White, worksHayley Scrivenor, worksMichael Robotham, worksPeter Temple, worksBarbara Kingsolver, worksHaruki Murakami, worksNagi Maehashi, Recipe Tin Eats seriesJock Serong, CherrywoodElizabeth Strout, Tell Me EverythingTim Winton, JuiceCormac McCarthy, The RoadKaliane Bradley, The Ministry of Time
BOOKS MENTIONED BY KATEFrancis Spufford, Cahokia JazzDylin Hardcastle, A Language of LimbsFiona McFarlane, Highway 13Catherine McKinnon, To Sing of WarAndrew O'Hagan, Caledonian RoadOlga Tokarczuk, The EmpusiumLouise Erdrich, The Mighty RedJames McBride, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store
BOOKS MENTIONED BY MICHAEL WILLIAMSMelissa Lucashenko, EdenglassieTony Birch, Women and ChildrenKate Grenville, Restless Dolly MaunderJonathan Lethem, Brooklyn Crime NovelRebecca Makkai, The Great BelieversNam Le, 36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese PoemRichard Osman, We Solve Murders seriesSally Rooney, IntermezzoHelen Garner, The SeasonMelanie Cheng, The Burrow
CREDITS
Stories of Northern Soul, pigs trotters in performance art and politics in the subtropical 1950s come to life in three new works of fiction including Vortex, the new novel from 88 year old Rodney Hall, twice winner of the Miles Franklin Award; Woo Woo, by another Australian writer, Ella Baxter; and Rare Singles, the latest from English writer and journalist Benjamin Myers.
BOOKS
Rodney Hall, Vortex, PicadorElla Baxter, Woo Woo, Allen & UnwinBenjamin Myers, Rare Singles, Bloomsbury
GUESTS
Gretchen Shirm, critic, novelist and teacher of creative writing. Her books include Having Cried Wolf, Where the Light Falls and The Crying Room. (Her book Out of the Woods will be published next year)
Stuart Coupe, music writer and promoter. His books include Roadies: The Secret History of Australian Rock N Roll; biographies of Paul Kelly, Tex Perkins and Michael Gudinski; and the memoir, Shake Some Action. (He is currently writing a history of the Australian entertainment industry and its links to organised crime)
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDJonathan Lethem, worksNick Hornsby, worksWalter Moseley, worksÉdouard Louis, Change; The End of EddyKate Jennings, Snake Bud Smith, TeenagerWilly Vlautin, The Horse
CREDITSPresenter, Kate Evans + Cassie McCullaghProducer, Kate Evans + Sarah CorbettSound engineer, Tegan NichollsExecutive producer, Rhiannon Brown
Kate and Cassie read Rita Bullwinkle's Headshot, a luminous debut that follows eight teenage girl boxers in Reno, Nevada. Crime writer Michael Robotham discusses Chris Whitaker’s All the Colours of the Dark – a story with a one-eyed boy, missing children, and a character who may or may not be an hallucination, and a nod to True Crime and Australia’s dark history in Fiona McFarlane’s Highway 13, with critic Beejay Silcox.
BOOKS
Rita Bullwinkel, Headshot, DB Originals
Fiona McFarlane, Highway 13, Allen & Unwin
Chris Whitaker, All the Colours of the Dark, Orion
GUESTS
Beejay Silcox, critic, essayist and director of the Canberra Writers Festival
Michael Robotham, internationally bestselling crime writer whose books include the Joe O’Loughlin series and the Cyrus Haven series. His latest is Storm Child
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDStephen King, worksDavid Owen Kelly, Host CityRebecca Makkai, The Great BelieversRodney Hall, VortexMichael Winkler, GrimmishJ.P. Pomare, Seventeen Years LaterColm Tóibín, Long Island
CREDITS
What does the 2024 Miles Franklin shortlist tell us about our shared imagination? Bernadette Brennan and Geordie Williamson join Kate and Cassie to examine the winner, Alexis Wright's epic novel Praiseworthy, and all the finalists for Australia’s most prestigious literary prize.
BOOKS
WINNER:
Alexis Wright, Praiseworthy (Giramondo)
REST OF SHORTLIST:
Hossein Asgari, Only Sound Remains (Puncher & Wattmann)Jen Craig, Wall (Puncher & Wattmann)André Dao, Anam (Hamish Hamilton)Gregory Day, The Bell of the World (Transit Lounge)Sanya Rushdi, Hospital, (Giramondo)
GUESTS
Bernadette Brennan, literary scholar, biographer, and former judge of the Miles Franklin
Geordie Williamson, literary critic and publisher
CREDITS
Presenter, Kate Evans + Cassie McCullaghProducer, Kate Evans + Sarah CorbettSound engineer, Tegan Nicholls and Ann Marie DebettencorExecutive producer, Rhiannon Brown
Bruce Isaacs on weird fiction novelist China Mievelle's The Book of Elsewhere, a genre-bending epic written in collaboration with Hollywood star Keanu Reeves. Plus, guest critic Ailsa Piper on The Echoes by Miles Franklin winning author Evie Wyld...set between London and rural Australia it's part love story, part ghost story, and Kate and Cassie discuss Choice by Booker-shortlisted author Neel Mukherjee, a bleak, powerful and viciously funny novel about a publisher at war with his industry and himself.
BOOKS
Neel Mukherjee, Choice, Atlantic Books
Evie Wyld, The Echoes, Vintage
Keanu Reeves & China Miéville, The Book of Elsewhere, Del Rey
GUESTS
Ailsa Piper, writer and performer whose latest book is For Life: A Memoir of Living and Dying – and Flying
Bruce Isaacs, Associate Prof of Film Studies at the University of Sydney; and co-host of the podcast Film Versus Film
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED
Sarah Winman, Still LifeEdna O'Brien, Girls in Their Married BlissThomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49Alfred Bester, The Stars My DestinationTed Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others
CREDITS
Award-winning U.S. author Willy Vlautin's The Horse is his poignant new novel about the life of a lonely country musician in Nevada and his chance encounter with a half blind horse. Plus, bookseller David Gaunt reviews Ammar Kalia's A Person Is a Prayer, one family's story of migration from Kenya and India to the UK; and Wellington based critic and curator Claire Mabey looks at Laurence Fearnley's At The Grand Glacier Hotel, which follows a stormy family holiday set on New Zealand's South Island.
BOOKS
Willy Vlautin, The Horse, Faber
Ammar Kalia, A Person is a Prayer, Oldcastle Books
Laurence Fearnley, At the Grand Glacier Hotel, Penguin
GUESTS
David Gaunt, co-owner, Gleebooks, Sydney – independent bookshop [and one of the founding board members of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation]
Claire Mabey, NZ based books editor and critic; founder of Verb Wellington readers and writers festival, co-curator of the writers program at the Aotearoa Festival of the Arts – and she has just written her first novel for children, The Raven’s Eye Runaways
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDPatrick O'Brian, Aubrey–Maturin seriesAnita Brookner, Hotel du LacEvie Wyld, The EchoesKatherine Rundell, Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John DonneSinead Gleeson, Hagstone
CREDITS
Kate Evans and Jonathan Green with guests Pip Williams and Sarah Bailey read Dylin Hardcastle's A Language of Limbs, Lev Grossman's The Bright Sword, Valeria Usala's A Woman in Sardinia and Jean-Baptiste del Amo's The Son of Man. Australian fiction, novels in translation, secrets and violence, cities and regions, queer love and emotional truths, and a hint of fantasy.
BOOKS
Dylin Hardcastle, A Language of Limbs, Picador
Lev Grossman, The Bright Sword, Del Ray
Valeria Usala, A Woman in Sardinia (trans from the Italian by Katherine Gregor), Text
Jean-Baptiste del Amo, The Son of Man (trans from the French by Frank Wynne), Text
GUESTS
Pip Williams, writer whose novels include The Dictionary of Lost Words and The Bookbinder of Jericho [Adelaide studios]
Sarah Bailey, crime writer whose books include The Dark Lake, The Housemate and – her latest, released in February this year – Body of Lies [Melb studios]
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED:
Shubnam Khan, The Djinn Waits 100 Years
Italo Calvino, If On a Winter's Night a Traveller
J P Pomare, Seventeen Years Later
Frederick Backman's Beartown
Arthuriads (an incomplete list)
Thomas Mallory, Le Morte D'Arthur
Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy (The Crystal Cave etc)
T H White's Once and Future King + series
Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon
Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
Guy Gavriel Kay, Fionavar Tapestry/ The Darkest Road trilogy
M K Hume's Merlin Emrys trilogy
Victoria Gosling, Bliss and Blunder
Sophie Keetch, Morgan is my Name
CREDITS
• Presenter, Kate Evans + Jonathan Green
• Producer, Kate Evans + James Pattison
• Sound engineer, Roi Huberman + Simon Branthwaite
• Executive producer, Rhiannon Brown
Money, kidnapping, reality TV, politics, corruption, families, love, and betrayal in all three books on this edition of The Bookshelf. Kate Evans and Jonathan Green, with guests Farz Edraki and Johan Gabrielsson, read Taffy Brodesser-Akner's Long Island Compromise, Porochistaa Khakpour's Tehrangeles and Patrick Holland's Oblivion. Awfully rich, richly awful.
BOOKS
Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Long Island Compromise, Wildfire
Porochistaa Khakpour, Tehrangeles: A Novel, Ultimo Press
Patrick Holland, Oblivion, Transit Lounge
GUESTS
Farz Edraki, Iranian-Australian writer and producer. Presenter of the ABC audio series, 'Days Like These'
Johan Gabrielsson, Swedish-born, Sydney-based filmmaker – and Bookshelf regular
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED
Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections
Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
Hossein Asgari, Only Sound Remains
Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Fleishman is in Trouble
Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!
James Joyce, Ulysses
Graham Greene, The Quiet American
Graham Greene, A Burnt-Out Case
Claire Keegan, Walk the Blue Fields
Claire Keegan, Antarctica
James Salter, works
Jonathan Franzen, works
Philip Roth, works
Miranda July, All Fours
Clive James, Poetry Notebook
Niklas Turner Olovzon, Iceberg
The band is back together! Join Cassie and Kate as they head to an island off North America in Julia Phillips’ Bear, plus two Australian novels – Jessie Tu’s The Honeyeater and Finegan Kruckemeyer’s The End and Everything Before It.
BOOKS
Julia Phillips, Bear, Scribe
Jessie Tu, The Honeyeater, Allen & Unwin
Finegan Kruckemeyer, The End and Everything Before It, Text
GUESTS
Tom Wright, theatre writer and literary adaptor; Artistic Associate at Belvoir Theatre
Nicole Abadee, books writer for the Good Weekend, interviewer at festivals, and Board Member, Indigenous Literacy Foundation
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDJulia Phillips, Disappearing EarthJessie Tu, A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous ThingBen Okri, The Freedom ArtistRobbie Arnott, Limberlost; The Rain HeronWillem Frederik Hermans, Beyond Sleep Catherine Newman, Sandwich; We All Want Impossible ThingsClare Lombardo, Same as it Ever Was
CREDITS
Kate Evans is joined by guest host Richard Aedy to discuss Catherine McKinnon's To Sing of War, a novel of love, war and friendship. Plus, two debut novels... Big Time by Jordan Prosser, set in a not-too-distant future Australia where pop music is propaganda, and Evenings and Weekends by Oisin McKenna, set during a heatwave in London as tensions and secrets come to a head over one life-changing weekend.BOOKS
Catherine McKinnon, To Sing of War, Fourth Estate
Jordan Prosser, Big Time, UQP
Oisín McKenna, Evenings and Weekends, Fourth Estate
GUESTS
Mark Mordue, poet and music writer/ rock journalist. His books include Boy on Fire – the Young Nick Cave, and the poetry collection Darlinghurst Funeral Rites. He’s also co artistic director of the Addison Road Writers Festival in Sydney
Patrick Carey, writer and digital producer; manages content at the Sydney Theatre Company
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDPaul Lynch, Prophet SongCatherine McKinnon, StorylandKai Bird and Martin J Sherwin, American PrometheusGeorge Orwell, 1984Charles Dickens, Bleak HouseVirginia Woolf, Mrs DallowayAndrew O'Hagan, Caledonian RoadJon Fosse, Aliss at the Fire; SeptologyKarl Ove Knausgaard, The Wolves of Eternity J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the RyeMischa Berlinski, Fieldwork Rachel Kushner, The Flamethrowers; The Mars RoomEric Newby, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush
CREDITS
Kate Evans returns with guest reviewers to discuss Bruce Pascoe’s Imperial Harvest, an epic of brutality and imperialism; along with Jenny Ackland’s Hurdy Gurdy, a circus saga set in a near-future Australia; and Miranda July’s All Fours, which looks at one woman's quest for a very unique kind of freedom.
BOOKS
Bruce Pascoe, Imperial Harvest, Melbourne Books
Jenny Ackland, Hurdy Gurdy, Allen & Unwin
Miranda July, All Fours, Canongate
GUESTS
Beejay Silcox, writer, critic and literary judge. Artistic Director, Canberra Writers Festival; chair of the Stella Prize 2024
Kate Mildenhall, writer whose latest novel is The Hummingbird Effect
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDMargaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale; Oryx and CrakeJane McGonigal, Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything Emily St John Mandel, Station ElevenClaire G. Coleman, Terra NulliusAlexis Wright, PraiseworthyCharlotte Wood, The Natural Way of ThingsNaomi Alderman, The PowerLisa Taddeo, Three WomenDavid Owen Kelly, Host CityScott Alexander Howard, The Other ValleyCatherine McKinnon, To Sing of WarRichard Flanagan, The Narrow Road to the Deep North Sharlene Allsopp, The Great Undoing
CREDITS
Cassie and Kate discuss Jenny Erpenbecks' Kairos (winner of the 2024 International Booker Prize) with critic Declan Fry - originally broadcast August 2023 when the book was first published; and interviews with writers A K Blakemore (The Glutton), Daniel Mason (North Woods) and Gretchen Shirm (The Crying Room) by Kate Evans.
BOOKS
GUESTS
CREDITS
Cassie and Tom Wright read The Parade by Rachel Cusk, her first since 2018’s Kudos, the final part of the acclaimed Outline trilogy. Once again, Cusk questions the very nature of truth.
James Ley joins to discuss Ceridwen Dovey’s new collection of short stories, Only the Astronauts, which takes us off-planet and into the “lives” of the objects that humans have sent into space.
Gretchen Shirm reviews Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti, constructed of sentences culled from 10 years of her journal writing and arranged, yes, alphabetically.
GUESTS
Gretchen Shirm, critic and writer whose books include the short story collection Having Cried Wolf and the novels Where the Light Falls and The Crying Room
James Ley, critic and literary judge. Deputy Books and Ideas Editor at The Conversation; former editor, Sydney Review of Books; one of the judges of the Miles Franklin Literary Award
BOOKS
Rachel Cusk, Parade (Allen and Unwin)
Ceridwen Dovey, Only the Astronauts (Penguin)
Sheila Heti, Alphabetical Diaries (Allen and Unwin)
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED
CREDITS
Cassie and Jonathan Green review The Ministry of Time by debut British-Cambodian novelist Kaliane Bradley, a heads up, it's brilliant.
Michael Brissenden reviews Crooked Seeds by South African writer Karen Jennings, a crime mystery set in Cape Town.
Nicole Abadee looks at The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry, a story that takes us to 1891 and a grim winter in a small mining town of immigrant Irish workers in the Rocky Mountains.
BOOKS
GUESTS
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDCormac McCarthy, worksPaul Lynch, worksSebastian Barry, workJoseph O'Connor, works Malcolm Knox, The First FriendClaire Messud, This Strange Eventful History
CREDITS
Cassie and Claire Nichols team up on stage at this year's Sydney Writers' Festival to grill some huge literary stars on their reading lives: Irish Booker Prize winner Paul Lynch, U.S. bestseller Celeste Ng, and Australia’s Christos Tsoilkas.
GUESTS
BOOKS AND WRITERS MENTIONED
CREDITS
Cassie and Jonathan Green review Safe Haven by 2023 Miles Franklin winner Shankari Chandran, Table For Two by Amor Towles (author of A Gentleman In Moscow), and Lies and Weddings by Kevin Kwan of Crazy Rich Asians fame.
BOOKS
Safe Haven, Shankari Chandran (Ultimo Press)
Lies and Weddings, Kevin Kwan (Penguin)
Table for Two, Amor Towles (Penguin)
GUESTS
Jennifer Wong, Chinese-Australian writer and comedian. She’s the presenter of Chopsticks or Fork?, a six-part AACTA-nominated ABC series on Chinese restaurants in regional Australia
Sam Twyford-Moore, writer and cultural historian whose latest book is Castmates: Australian actors in Hollywood and at Home
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDRoald Dahl, worksJohn Cheever, worksO Henry, worksPaul Auster, worksKirstin Chen, CounterfeitGrace D. Li, Portrait of a ThiefGeoff Dyer, The Ongoing Moment
CREDITS
Cassie and guest host Tom Wright discuss Claire Messud's This Strange Eventful History, about a family torn apart by war, geography, politics and religion, over the course of three generations. Plus, guests Claire Mabey and Shannon Burns review new fiction from Sarah Perry and Alan Murrin.
BOOKS
This Strange Eventful History, Claire Messud (Hachette)
Enlightenment, Sarah Perry (Penguin)
The Coast Road, Alan Murrin (Bloomsbury)
GUESTS
Shannon Burns, writer, critic, and member of The JM Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice at the University of Adelaide. His book Childhood: A Memoir is published by Text and has just been shortlisted for the NSW Premiers' Literary Awards Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction
Claire Mabey, Founder of Verb Wellington and books editor at The Spinoff (NZ online culture and news site). Her first book, a middle grade novel called The Raven's Eye Runaways will be published in July
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED
Edna O'Brien, Byron in LoveJavier Marías, A Heart So WhiteNicholas John Turner, Let the Boys PlayLauren Groff, The Vaster WildsLouise Wallace, AshMax Porter, works
CREDITS
Cassie and Jonathan Green discuss Colm Tóibín's eagerly awaited new novel Long Island.
Star reviewers Madeleine Gray and Benjamin Law discuss buzzy new fiction from Siang Lu (Ghost Cities), and Rachel Khong (Real Americans).
BOOKS
Long Island, Colm Toibin (Pan Macmillan)
Ghost Cities, Siang Lu (UQP)
Real Americans, Rachel Khong (Penguin)
GUESTS
Benjamin Law, writer, columnist, screenwriter. His work includes The Family Law and Wellmania
Madeleine Gray, arts writer, critic and PhD candidate in English Literature. Her debut novel is Green Dot (A&U)
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONED
Haruki Murakami, works
Sarah Firth, Eventually Everything Connects
Helen Garner, works
Joan Didion, works
Dylin Hardcastle, A Language of Limbs
Jessie Tu, The Honeyeater
Jessica Au, Cold Enough For Snow
Madison Godfrey, Dress Rehearsals
CREDITS
Cassie and Jonathan Green look at Until August, the lost novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and guest reviewers Hannah Kent and Roanna Gonsalves discuss powerful new fiction out of Iceland and the UK.
Cassie and guest host Beejay Silcox read new work by One Day sensation David Nicholls.
Cassie, Tom Wright and guests look at The End of the Morning, the never-before-published novel by the Australian writer Charmian Clift, who died in 1969.
Plus, The Alternatives by Ireland’s Caoilinn Hughes, and Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange, about the consequences of colonisation and the forced assimilation of Native Americans, which is already generating high praise.
BOOKS
The End of the Morning, Charmian Clift (New South)
Wandering Stars, Tommy Orange (Penguin Random House)
The Alternatives, Caoilinn Hughes (A&U)
GUESTS
Nicole Abadee, Books writer, podcaster and festival moderator who regularly interviews at writers festivals and literary events. Contributor to Good Weekend magazine.
Paul Daley, Walkley award-winning columnist for The Guardian who regularly writes on Indigenous affairs. He is also a novelist, short story writer, essayist and playwright. His latest novel is Jesustown
OTHER BOOKS MENTIONEDGeroge Johnston, Meredith TrilogyRandolph Stow, The Merry-Go-Round in the SeaHal Porter, The Watcher on the Cast-Iron Balcony Sumner Locke Elliott, Careful He Might Hear YouHazzard and Harrower (Edited by Brigitta Olubas, Susan Wyndham)Shankari Chandran, Safe Haven James Bradley, Deep WaterHenry Handel Richardson, Maurice GuestIvy Compton-Burnett, The Present and the Past
CREDITS
Michaela Kalowski and Cassie look at The Work by Bri Lee, plus new novels from Call Me By Your Name author Andre Aciman, and a work of speculative fiction by Mykaela Saunders.
Cassie and guest host Tom Wright take a look at the exceptional new novel from award-winning Scottish writer Andrew O'Hagan, plus, a genre bending mystery from Stuart Turton and a clever new thriller set in Edinburgh.
Cassie and Jonathan read Orange Prize winner Téa Obreht’s The Morningside, a dystopian coming-of-age story, plus, a Japanese bestseller and a new post-war literary crime series.
Reimagining Huckleberry Finn, alienation and a talking fox in this edition of The Bookshelf.
Cassie and Jonathan Green review three new Australian novels with guest star Claire Nichols and novelist Graham Akhurst.
Cassie and co-host Tom Wright review two new Australian novels, and from across the ‘Dutch',
Cassie McCullagh and Jonathan Green review a literary project edited by Margaret Atwood, and new work by Gail Jones and Jennifer Croft.
Cassie and guest host (and playwright) Tom Wright review three new works of fiction.
Mysteries and twists galore in new work by Kemper Donovan and best-selling British-Cypriot author Alex Michaelides; and award-winning Irish novelist Mike McCormack's follow up to Solar Bones.
Cassie McCullagh and Michaela Kalowski review new novels including Francis Spufford's Cahokia Jazz, Hisham Matar's My Friends and Kiley Reid's Come and Get It.
The Bookshelf is back for 2024 reviewing the latest from Katherena Vermette, Dolly Alderton and Jonathan Lethem.
Reclaiming and retelling Australian history, where time is both stilled and circular, in Melissa Lucashenko's Edenglassie; and commenting on the past through alternative futures, in Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's Chain-Gang All-Stars, Catherine Lacey's Biography of X and Carole Hailey's The Silence Project.
The Bookshelf is a program for dedicated readers and those who wished they read more.
Restoration political satire, Mediaeval rumour, eco-terrorism in New Zealand and a young man with a mixtape full of angst. Reading Max Porter's Shy, Eleanor Catton's Birnam Wood, Robyn Cadwallader's The Fire and the Rose with guests Clare Mabey and Clare Monagle; and an introduction to the writing of Aphra Behn from novelist Karen Brooks (The Escapades of Tribulation Johnson)
Looking for books to rock you back on your heels? You've come to the right place. Kate and Cassie read Deborah Levy's August Blue, Colson Whitehead's Crook Manifesto, Elizabeth McCracken's The Hero of this Book and Claire Kilroy's Soldier Sailor, with Miles Merrill, Bernadette Brennan, Jonathan Green and Ashley Hay
Best books from the year, and some new interviews too. Kate and Cassie read Ann Patchett’s Tom Lake and Deepti Kapoor’s Age of Vice with guest crime specialist Sue Turnbull (and an extended conversation with Kapoor), and fantasy and the imagination with scholar and children’s author Katherine Rundell and her Impossible Creatures.
Melanie Saward joins Kate for a genre-filled reading recommendation discussion of romance, the pseudonymous crime fiction of Australian author George Johnston (with Derham Groves), and historical fiction of the Hundred Years War with Dan Jones. What will you read over Summer?
Kate, Cassie and three reading guests (critic Beejay Silcox, Books Editor Jason Steger and kids' author Tristan Bancks) on the books they've loved, the books they'd recommend, the books to give to a friend, the books to read over Summer (and yes, there is a list).
Kate Evans onstage for the Bookshelf and Canberra Writers Festival with CWF Artistic Director and critic Beejay Silcox, and novelist Edwina Preston, on Edwina's novel Bad Art Mother . . . and art, writing, motherhood, poetry and all the rest.
Are you a crime fiction thriller fan? Those stories that get your heart racing and keep you awake all night? Even if you only dip into the genre once in a blue moon, you'll want to join us for a lively thriller themed Book Club with two top-notch crime fiction afficiandoes.
Kate and Cassie read Nicholas Jose's The Idealist, Michael Cunningham's Day, Naomi Alderman's The Future and Katherine Brabon's Body Friend with guests Eugen Bacon (Serengotti) and Mireille Juchau (The World Without Us)
Kate and Cassie read Lucy Treloar’s Days of Innocence and Wonder, Paul Auster’s Baumgartner, Tony Birch’s Women and Children and A K Blakemore’s The Glutton with academic Bruce Isaacs and writer Laura Elvery
Kate and Cassie read Richard Flanagan's Question 7, Jayne Anne Phillips' Night Watch and Sigrid Nunez's The Vulnerables with guests novelist Eleanor Limprecht and writer Patrick Carey
A monthly Book Club edition looking at works by two major literary names that add to the growing body of work attempting to address the past.
Kate and Cassie read Christos Tsiolkas' The In-Between, Siân Hughes' Pearl, Amanda Lohrey's The Conversion and David Diop's Beyond the Door of No Return with guests critic and literary judge James Ley and novelist and podcaster Kate Mildenhall. Translation, shame, lamentations, renovation and love.
Kate and Cassie read Victoria Gosling's Bliss and Blunder, Sophie Keetch's Morgan is my Name, Joel Deane's Judas Boys and Mona Awad's Rouge with novelist A J Betts and theatre writer Tom Wright
Kate and Cassie read Melissa Lucashenko's Edenglassie, Charlotte Wood's Stone Yard Devotional and Bryan Washington's Family Meal with guests Meredith Lake (Soul Search) and writer Sam Twyford-Moore (Castmates: Australian actors in Hollywood and at Home).
Three major new works to delve into in this episode, by Trent Dalton, Paul Harding and Suzie Miller.
In this edition of The Book Club we look at the art, and the science, of the short story with three brand new and intriguing Australian collections.
Kate and Cassie read Lauren Groff's The Vaster Wilds, Daniel Mason's North Woods and Anna Kate Blair's The Modern with writer Maggie Mackellar (Graft) and the Art Show's Rosa Ellen. Survival, hunger, lush landscapes, ambition, art, history . . . with a surprising side of beetles, apples, wedding dresses and frozen fish.
Reading yet more extraordinary fiction from Irish novelists (OK Emma Donoghue actually now lives in Canada, but she's originally Irish): Kate and Cassie on Paul Lynch's Prophet Song, Anne Enright's The Wren, The Wren, and Emma Donoghue's Learned by Heart with guests critic and novelist Gretchen Shirm and poet Beth Spencer
Kate Evans discusses historical fiction onstage at the Sydney Writers Festival with Geraldine Brooks (Horse, Year of Wonders, March), Pip Williams (The Bookbinder of Jericho, The Dictionary of Lost Words) and Sally Colin-James)
A year on from the death of Frank Moorhouse, we examine the work of this much-loved yet troubled writer with his biographer Catharine Lumby and colleague Angelo Loukakis.
Kate and Cassie read Chris Womersley's Ordinary Gods and Monsters, Jenny Erpenbeck's Kairos and Tan Twan Eng's The House of Doors with critic Declan Fry and novelist Nilima Rao
Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh read Peter Polites' God Forgets About the Poor, Angela O'Keeffe's The Sitter and Guy Guneratne's Mister Mister with poet Madison Godfrey and journalist and novelist Paul Daley
Cassie and Kate read Ann Patchett's Tom Lake, Naoise Dolan's The Happy Couple and Hwang Sok-yong's Mater 2-10 with actor Angourie Rice and novelist Jock Serong
Kate, Cassie and guests examine all six finalists for the 2023 miles Franklin Literary Award.
Kate and Cassie read Colson Whitehead's Crook Manifesto, Elizabeth McCracken's The Hero of this Book and Emily Perkins' Lioness with poet Miles Merrill and literary scholar Bernadette Brennan
Kate Evans and Jonathan Green read Gretchen Shirm's The Crying Room, Richard Ford's Be Mine and Claire Kilroy's Soldier Sailor with historian Peter McPhee and writer Ashley Hay. Cassie McCullagh will be back for the next edition of The Bookshelf.
Kate Evans onstage with writers Colson Whitehead, Eleanor Catton, Richard Flanagan and Tracey Lien at the recent Sydney Writers Festival, on the state of the novel.
Aboriginal, Chinese-Malaysian and Muslim writer and academic Eugenia Flynn co-hosts the Bookshelf this week with Kate Evans, reading Anna Funder's Wifedom: Mrs Orwell's Invisible Life, Priya Guns' Your Driver is Waiting and Jen Craig's Wall with novelists Max Easton (The Magpie Wing) and Amy Taylor (Search History)
What is it about the Greek myths that make them so adaptable, reusable, ever popular – and up for all manner of rewrites?
Interviews with all six shortlisted authors for the 2023 Miles Franklin Literary Award from RN's The Bookshelf and Book Show (in alphabetical order). The shortlist was announced on 20 June; the winner will be announced on 25 July.
Stealing a manuscript, walking your grief along coastal edges and underhand behaviour at an international AIDS conference: Kate and Cassie read Dennis Altman's Death in the Sauna, R F Kuang's Yellowface and Briohny Doyle's Why We Are Here with guests Benjamin Law and Lee Kofman
A story of wandering pilgrims, woman brewers, stonemasons and eels – in the North of England from the 7th century until now; and Métis-Michif women in Canada across the twentieth and into the twenty-first century: Kate Evans speaks with Katherena Vermette about The Strangers (recorded at the 2023 Brisbane Writers Festival) and Benjamin Myers about Cuddy
Naked politicians, roadtrips with the dead, and funny-sad girls in Berlin: Kate and Cassie read Robert Gott's Naked Ambition, Lorrie Moore's I am Homeless if this is not My Home and Pip Finkemeyer's Sad Girl Novel with critics Jessie Tu and Madeleine Gray.
Step aboard this Book Club edition of The Bookshelf which is hopelessly devoted to the genre of Romantic Comedy.
Kate and Cassie recorded this edition of The Bookshelf onstage at the Sydney Writers Festival on Friday 26 May 2023 with writers Shehan Karunatilaka, Jason Reynolds and Grace Chan
Kate and Cassie read Benjamin Myers' Cuddy, Robyn Cadwallader's The Fire and the Rose and Emma Cline's The Guest with mediaeval historian Clare Monagle and novelist Laura McPhee-Brown
Kate and Cassie read Deborah Levy's August Blue, André Dao's Anam and Catherine Lacey's Biography of X with guests writer and curator Sheila Ngọc Phạm and theatre writer Tom Wright. Histories, family stories, identities, doppelgangers, secrets and lies.
Kate and Cassie read John Kinsella’s Cell Night: A Verse Novel, Jente Posthuma’s What I’d Rather Not Think About and Justin Cronin’s The Ferryman with poet and novelist Omar Sakr and documentary maker Johan Gabrielsson
When Salman Rushdie was attacked in Chautauqua, New York in August last year, Victory City, his latest novel, was already finished. Some say it's not only a return to form, but also uncannily prophetic.
Reading Max Porter's Shy, Han Kang's Greek Lessons and Yan Lianke's Heart Sutra with writers (and writers-in-translation, both) Linda Jaivin and Ennis Ćehić
Reading Pip Williams' The Bookbinder of Jericho, Juan Gómez-Jurado's Red Queen and Nicole Flattery's Nothing Special with writers Ashley Kalagian Blunt and Joanna Horton
Savage explorations of the present, using different literary forms, in two new novels. Kate and Cassie are joined by guests film academic Bruce Isaacs and NZ literary leader Claire Mabey, to read Booker Prize winning novelist Eleanor Catton's latest, Birnam Wood, and American writer Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's Chain-Gang All-Stars.
A journey through the myriad of ways weather presents itself in fiction for this monthly edition of The Book Club.
Reading Julia Langbein's comedic take on Hollywood's ruthless screen industry in American Mermaid, and Stephanie Bishop's The Anniversary, a watery mystery about creative tension and desire.
Reading award-winning novelist Rebecca Makkai's I Have Some Questions For You, along with The Silence Project by Carole Hailey. Plus, an interview with much-loved Irish novelist Sebastian Barry.
Reading Anindita Ghose's bestseller The Illuminated and Is Mother Dead by Norwegian author Vigdis Hjorth with guest reviewers Maria Takolander and Suma Iyer, and an interview with Australian author Alice Nelson.
Novels about infidelity can be cautionary tales but also reveal changing attitudes
Is there a more enduring theme in literature? From the ancient greats to bestseller romances, it's been the subject of both untold anguish and fascination. Why is it that we never seem to tire of this all-too-human experience?
A Sydney WorldPride edition of the Bookshelf, as Kate and Cassie are joined by guests George Haddad and C S Pacat to read Samantha Shannon's A Day of Fallen Night and K Ming Chang's Gods of Want (with comments from both these writers); and Arinze Ifeakandu (God's Children Are Little Broken Things) on queer lives and writing in Nigeria.
Reading Kevin Jared Hosein's Hungry Ghosts, set in 1940s Trinidad (and we hear from the author too); Tom Rob Smith's Cold People, in a reshaped Antarctica, and Cho Nam-Joo's Saha in a corporate city-state, imagined in Korea. Kate and Cassie are joined by writer Shannon Burns and literary facilitator Michaela Kalowski.
Poet Maxine Beneba Clarke and novelist Michael Winkler join Kate and Cassie as they read Ronnie Scott's Shirley, Eleanor Shearer's River Sing Me Home and James Kelman's God's Teeth and Other Phenomena
Unquiet ghosts, disconcerting babies, a shattered bust of a despot and a frontier Western: reading Stefan Hertmans' The Ascent, Ben Hobson's The Death of John Lacey and Laura McPhee Browns Little Plum with guests books writer Nicole Abadee and crime podcaster Ben Herder; and speaking with Paul Dalgarno about the books that shaped his latest, A Country of Eternal Light (hint: hello, Frankenstein)
Kate and Cassie are back with new fiction for 2023: reading Bret Easton Ellis' The Shards and Deepti Kapoor's Age of Vice with guests Geordie Williamson and Sue Turnbull; and Brigitta Olubas on her biography of writer Shirley Hazzard
Hoofbeats, assassins and tracks in the snow. Rereading Gillian Mears’ novel Foal’s Bread; reading Kári Gíslason's The Sorrow Stone; and speaking to Karen Joy Fowler about her novel Booth and the books that shaped it.
A child is lost in a nineteenth-century landscape carved out of both thousands of years of history, and more recent expectations and misunderstandings. An entire community rallies to find him – but their pathways diverge, overtake, retrace and obliterate each other. What a story! Novelist Fiona McFarlane speaks about The Sun Walks Down with Kate Evans.
Reading Steve Toltz's Here Goes Nothing and Ashley Goldberg's Abomination, and speaking to Tracey Lien (All That's Left Unsaid) and Sue Orr (Loop Tracks) about the books that have shaped them.
Stories that are tough and joyful, heartbreaking and beautiful, confronting and worth it: Kate Evans speaks with New Zealand writer Becky Manawatu about her novel, Aue; and to American writer Leila Mottley about Nightcrawling
Reading Canadian Métis writer Katherena Vermette's The Strangers, Irish writer Louise Kennedy's Trespasses, and speaking to Scottish writer Graeme Macrae Burnet about Case Study and the bookshelf that made it
What is it about Irish storytelling: that combination of poetry and pain, brutality and a wicked laugh or ten? All that lyrical toughness, and a sense of a history punctuated by a drumbeat of violence, is on display in Audrey Magee's novel, The Colony. A conversation with Kate Evans
Other books and writers mentioned in this conversation:
Emily Dickinson, works
Marcel Proust, works
James Joyce, works
Colette, works
Peig: The autobiography of Peig Sayers
William Butler Yeats, works
Reading Chris Womersley's The Diplomat, Lauren John Joseph's At Certain Points We Touch and Jonathan Bazzi's Fever – with Nigel Featherstone; and talking to Nigerian-English writer Nikki May about her novel Wahala and the bookshelf that shaped her
Two writers who grapple with crime, with very different style and intent, in conversation with Kate Evans. American writer John Darnielle is also a musician (The Mountain Goats), and his books include Wolf in White Van and Universal Harvester. He speaks with Kate about his latest, Devil House. New Zealand crimewriter Charity Norman had an earlier career in England as a barrister, but now prefers fictional mysteries. Her books include After the Fall, The Secrets of Strangers and – the one to which we've attached this conversation – Remember Me
Four novels about islands: reading Emily Brugman's The Islands, Audrey Magee's The Colony and Eliza Henry Jones' Salt and Skin; and speaking to Tom Watson about his novel Metronome
English novelist Patrick Gale specialises in hidden lives, secret stories, and celebrating queer histories. His books include Rough Music, Notes from an Exhibition, and A Place Called Winter: and in his latest and seventeenth novel, Mother's Boy, he fictionalises the life of Cornish poet Charles Causley. He speaks to Kate Evans for a special Summer edition of The Bookshelf
Four writers speak to Kate Evans at the 2022 Melbourne Writers Festival about a particularly significant book, that shaped or defined them in some way: Abbas Nazari, Maya Hodge, Sarah Holland Batt and Chloe Hooper
Bestselling English novelist Philippa Gregory speaks with Kate Evans about the radical politics of the seventeenth century and how best to capture that in fiction.
Kate and Cassie are joined by guests literary editor Jason Steger, books podcaster Dani Vee and crime aficionado Felix Shannon to talk their favourite books of 2022 (and yes, we have indeed listed them all)
Talking cricket in fiction, with a particular focus on Inga Simpson's new novel, Willowman, with RN's sports specialist Warwick Hadfield, historian Marion Stell and journalist and crime writer Michael Brissenden
Reading Philip Salom's Sweeney and the Bicycles, Arinze Ifeakandu's God's Children Are Little Broken Things and Celeste Ng's Our Missing Hearts with Shakespearean scholar Huw Griffiths and novelist Nova Weetman
Walking the streets and exploring the shadows in 1930s Australia, in Fiona Kelly McGregor's Iris; lost towns and lost souls in Shaun Prescott's Bon and Lesley; and a dreamy not-quite-romance in Yumna Kassab's The Lovers with guests novelist Max Easton and literary studied academic Jodi McAlister
Witnessing a great and terrible event in Gail Jones' Salonika Burning; a life up-ended and re-worked in Alex Miller's A Brief Affair; and careful observations of everyday wonder in Luke Carman's An Ordinary Ecstasy.
Exploring the novels of Pakistani and English writer Kamala Shamsie with Maryam Azam and Sonia Nair, with a particular focus on Best of Friends and Home Fire
A brother and sister walk uneasy paths, and plumb both literal and hallucinatory depths in Cormac McCarthy's The Passenger; worlds and characters explode across both space and time in Cole Haddon's Psalms for the End of the World; and nineteenth-century Australia and its mythologies remade in Fiona McFarlane's The Sun Walks Down. Kate and Cassie are joined by guests rock star Tim Rogers, and critic and memoirist Shannon Burns
An all-American edition of the bookshelf, with new fiction from George Saunders, Barbara Kingsolver and John Irving. Both Charles Dickens and Herman Melville also get a look in. Kate and Cassie are joined by novelist Felicity McLean and literary academic David Ellison
Two wildly different sisters are trying to work out how to live and who to love during a sweaty Sydney summer in Diana Reid's hotly anticipated new novel Seeing Other People. In Chris Flynn's short story collection Here Be Leviathans, stories are told from the perspective of animals including a grizzly bear and a family of platypus, as well as inanimate objects like airline seats and hotel rooms. Plus, Ling Ma's Bliss Montage, a dazzling collection of short stories that include a woman who lives with her husband and 100 ex-boyfriends in L.A.
in this episode Jonathan Green joins Cassie McCullagh to talk about three hard hitting new works of fiction from Robbie Arnott, Donal Ryan and Michael Bennett.
In this edition of RN's monthly Book Club, we look at Ian McEwan's extraordinary body of work, paying particular attention to his new novel Lessons, a meditation on history and humanity presented through the span of one man's lifetime.
English writer Hilary Mantel has sadly died, aged 70. The Booker prize winning author spoke to Kate Evans for the Big Weekend of Books in 2020.
Three sisters, locked in their lifelong roles, on a roadtrip, in Peggy Frew's Wildflowers; a London underworld full of betrayal and promise, in Kate Atkinson's Shrines of Gaiety (read by Rohan Wilson); and talking to Adrian McKinty about the differences between noir and thrillers.
Reading Tracey Lien's All That's Left Unsaid, Diane Connell's The Improbable Life of Ricky Bird and Clarissa Goenawan's Watersong – Kate Evans and Elizabeth Flynn with guests George Haddad and Mandi McIntosh.
Kate and Cassie with three new novels: grappling with modernism and creativity in Sophie Cunningham's This Devastating Fever; a young woman caged by intrigue and expectations in Maggie O'Farrell's The Marriage Portrait; and working soldiers bleed across France in Dan Jones' Essex Dogs – with guests Stephen Gapps and Amy Walters
RN's Book Club in a different format to usual: a panel discussion plus a quick reading guide. The big question: Is crime fiction a literature of resistance? Also, a guide to fiction in translation from Korea
A story of three men trying to create a new world, on a craggy island in seventh-century Ireland, in Emma Donoghue's Haven; anxieties about race and migration, in Mohsin Hamid's The Last White Man; and scrappy voices from history, in Selby Wynn Schwartz's fragmentary lesbian colloquy, After Sappho.
Joan of Arc as a capable, scrappy young woman; unmoored on a strange coastline; and trees in both crime fiction and the Australian literary imaginary: reading Scott McCulloch's Basin, Katherine J Chen's Joan (with Prof of Philosophy Karen Green) and crime writer Margaret Hickey's Stone Town on both crime and landscape
Reading Robert Drewe's Nimblefoot, Eliza Henry-Jones' Salt and Skin and Sloane Crosley's Cult Classic with critic and literary judge Susan Wyndham and novelist and funeral director Jackie Bailey
Writers Hayley Scrivenor, Michael Brissenden and Yumna Kassab join Kate and Cassie onstage to talk libraries, stories, trauma, failure, children, Australian identity and more in this Big Weekend of Books edition of The Bookshelf
Reviewing the 2022 Miles Franklin Literary Award winner, Jennifer Down's Bodies of Light, and shortlist with theatre writer Tom Wright and literary critic and interviewer Nicole Abadee
Reading Chris Womersley's The Diplomat and Anjali Joseph's Keeping in Touch plus a guide to Sri Lankan fiction from Smriti Daniel and what's coming out later this year with independent bookseller Mark Rubbo. Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh, bringing you new fiction
Contact history and its 'saviour' mythologies turned upside down in Paul Daley's Jesustown; inside-out fairytales and an invented gothic world in A G Slatter's The Path of Thorns (read by Elizabeth Flynn); and a guide to middle-grade fiction from writer Tristan Bancks. Kate Evans and Cassie McCullagh, bringing you new fiction
Australian dystopias, historical shipwrecks and women's lives in Oman: reading Claire G Coleman's Enclave, Jokha Alharthi's Bitter Orange Tree and Jess Kidd's The Night Ship with guests novelist Sally Piper and essayist Eda Gunaydin; and Jane Rawson on her A History of Dreams and its influences
Reading Alexis Wright's Carpentaria and Patrick White's The Vivisector with critic Geordie Williamson - and with words from the writers themselves, as well as other voices and commentators from the ABC Archives
Vale Frank Moorhouse, journalist, essayist, shortstory writer and novelist. Remembering the writer with his friend, Angelo Loukakis, and with archival interviews from 1980 (The Everlasting Secret Family) and 2000 (Dark Palace, the second in the Edith Campbell Berry trilogy, which went on to win the 2001 Miles Franklin Literary Award)
A tough and poetic family story of the Métis (Michif) people of Canada in Katherena Vermette's The Strangers; and exclusion and compassion in Australian history, with a novel set in a lazaret, in Eleanor Limprecht's The Coast (read by historian Dr Ian Hoskins)
Three books by Australian authors: crime in Sydney in Matthew Spencer's Black River; rewriting a sidelined character from a classic of modernism, in Michelle Cahill's Daisy and Woolf, and friendship and exile in an Orthodox Jewish community in Melbourne in Ashley Goldberg's Abomination, with guests writer Kari Gislason and literary interviewer Michaela Kalowski
Reading Geraldine Brooks' Horse, Leila Mottley's Nightcrawling and Zaheda Ghani's Pomegranate and Fig with journalist, music writer and memoirist Mawunyo Gbogbo (Hip Hop and Hymns) and CEO of the Australian Muslim Women's Centre for Human Rights, Diana Sayed
Reading Gillian Mears' 2011 novel Foal’s Bread and Craig Sherborne's recent release The Grass Hotel with critic and biographer Bernadette Brennan and writer and cultural historian Luke Stegemann
Reading Brendan Colley's The Signal Line, Louise Kennedy's Trespasses, Lauren John Joseph's At Certain Points We Touch and Jonathan Bazzi's Fever with novelists Nigel Featherstone (My Heart is a Little Wild Thing) and Ellie O'Neill (Family Matters)
Why do we read and reread? And how does rereading read us? From the Sydney Writers Festival, Kate was onstage with bibliomemoirist Ruth Wilson and scholar Bernadette Brennan
In front of an audience, and with plenty of book recommendations, Kate and Cassie are onstage with historian and biographer Jackie Huggins and novelists Damon Galgut and George Haddad
Reading Steve Toltz's Here Goes Nothing, Emiliano Monge's What Goes Unsaid and Dominique Wilson's Orphan Rock with Lauren Chater (The Winter Dress) and Jonty Claypole (Words Fail Us: In Defence of Disfluency)
Reading Paddy O’Reilly's Other Houses, Patrick Gale's Mother’s Boy and Norman Erikson Pasaribu's Happy Stories, Mostly with writers Ennis Ćehić (Sadvertising) and Hilde Hinton (A Solitary Walk on the Moon)
Reading Jennifer Egan's 2010 novel A Visit from the Goon Squad and her newly-released The Candy House, with rock'n'roll reader Tim Rogers and novelist Rhett Davis
Cassie is away this week, so Kate is joined by the ABC's Tiger Webb: reading Emily St John Mandel's Sea of Tranquility, Steven Carroll's Goodnight, Vivienne, Goodnight, and Mona Awad's All’s Well, with novelist Rhett Davis and critic Nicole Abadee
Reading Douglas Stuart's Young Mungo, Julian Barnes' Elizabeth Finch and Charmian Clift's Sneaky Little Revolutions: Selected Essays with writers Nadia Wheatley and Ruth Wilson (The Jane Austen Remedy)
Reading Jessica Au's Cold Enough for Snow, John Darnielle's Devil House and Julie Otsuka's The Swimmers with novelists Anna Downes and Diana Reid.
Children, violence, landscape, and powerful and strange writing: we're talking fiction from New Zealand with the director of Wellington's Verb Writers' Festival Claire Mabey and novelist Sam Coley. Rereading Keri Hulmes' The Bone People from 1984 and the newly-released The Fish by Lloyd Jones. Passion, laughter, and even some tears
Reading Mexican writer Fernanda Melchor's Paradais, Australian Toni Jordan's Dinner with the Schnabels and English debut novelist Tom Watson's Metronome
Reading Robert Lukins' Loveland, Kári Gíslason's The Sorrow Stone and Harlan Coben's The Match with crime writer Loraine Peck (The Second Son) and mediaeval Icelandic literature specialist Lisa Bennett
Reading Irish novel The Colony by Audrey Magee, and two New Zealand novels, Becky Manawatu's Auē and Sue Orr's Loop Tracks, with guests publisher Jemma Birrell and novelist Lyn Yeowart
Reading Monica Ali's 2003 debut novel, Brick Lane and latest release, Love Marriage with guests writer Roanna Gonsalves and RN's Richard Aedy. Love, marriage, migration, displacement, drama, storytelling.
Western Sydney, coastal Victoria and nineteenth-century America: reading Omar Sakr's Son of Sin, Karen Joy Fowler's Booth and Aoife Clifford's When We Fall with guests historian Ethan Blue and crime afficionado Felix Shannon
Reading Sequoia Nagamatsu's How High We Go in the Dark, Juhea Kim's Beasts of a Little Land and Claudia Durastanti, Strangers I Know with guests Melissa Fulton from The Big Issue and literary studies academic Julian Novitz
Reading Emily Brugman's The Islands, Vanessa Len's Only a Monster and Hélène Gaudy's A World With No Shore (translated by Stephanie Smee) with writers Michelle Law and Molly Murn
Reading Daphne du Maurier's 1938 novel, Rebecca, and Graeme Macrae Burnet's Case Study (which includes a character in the mid 1960s who takes on a Rebecca persona in direct response to du Maurier's novel) - with guests literary lecturer Susannah Fullerton and crime writer Chris Hammer
Reading Hanya Yanigahara's To Paradise, Gary Shteyngart's Our Country Friends and Nikki May's Wahala with novelist and critic Jessie Tu and poet and performer Geoff Forrester (whose alter ego, Tug Dumbly, also offers up a poem)
A special edition of The Bookshelf, with writer Pip Williams speaking to Kate about her career, research, year in Italy, and interest in the history of words and their visibility, leading to the novel The Dictionary of Lost Words (a conversation from the 2021 Brisbane Writers Festival, online).
Kate and Cassie read Hannah Kent's Devotion; RN's Daniel Browning reads Caleb Azumah Nelson's Open Water; novelist Rashida Murphy reads Sunjeev Sahota's China Room; and novelist Aravind Adiga on Australian fiction
Reading, writers, family, art and mentors in Siri Hustvedt's essay collection, Mothers, Fathers and Others; and dissipating ghosts, cities and stories in Jennifer Mills' The Airways
Kate and Cassie read Patricia Lockwood's No One is Talking About This; Eugen Bacon on Suyi Davies Okungbowa's Son of the Storm; a story from Ann Patchett's These Precious Days; Simon Winchester discussing Anthony Trollope in remote China; and Jay Kristoff on the books that shaped his latest, Empire of the Vampire
Tilly Lawless on her debut novel Nothing but My Body, and her reading inspiration; and Jon McGregor on aphasia and Antarctica, in his Lean Fall Stand
Kate and Cassie on James Ellroy's Widespread Panic; Debra Oswald on Jhumpa Lahiri's Whereabouts; Robert Gott on Guillermo Martinez' The Oxford Brotherhood and Charlotte McConaghy with the Bookshelf that Made Me (and her book, Once There Were Wolves)
Crime writers R W R McDonald (The Nancys, Nancy Business) and Jacqueline Bublitz (Before you Knew My Name) on the books that they are writing against, in concert with, inspired by, and so on (it's a complicated business).
Biographer Bernadette Brennan on why we should read and know Australian writer Gillian Mears; music writer Mark Mordue on Taylor Jenkins Reid’s Malibu Rising, and mediaevalist Louise D'Arcens on a new translation of Beowulf
A fictional biography of German Nobel Prize winning writer Thomas Manne (and his extraordinary family) by Irish writer Colm Tóibín, with The Magician; and a roadtrip across America in Emily Gale's Wild Abandon. But what do these writers read?
A new interview with Elizabeth Strout about Oh, William! and the Bookshelf that Made Her; and favourite review discussions from the year about Jane Austen, Joan Silber and Kevin Barry with readers Ruth Wilson and Michael McGirr
Writers and their bookshelves. Sarah Winman's Still Life moves between England and Florence, while Nick Earls' Empires travels from Brisbane to Alaska, London, Vienna and Hong Kong. But what are the books that shaped these novels and these writers?
What are the books that have shaped these writers and (in particular) their latest works? Ken Follett, Rose Tremaine, Amie Kaufman & Jaclyn Moriarty
Reading recommendations from writer and critic Beejay Silcox, crime writer Christian White and memoirist Lech Blaine. What are the books they have especially admired this year?
Actor Claudia Karvan speaks to Kate Evans about her reading life and the Books That Made Us
Reading John Hughes' The Dogs and Kate Grenville's The Secret River with historian David Hunt and writer and philosopher Michael McGirr
Introducing Classic Australian Novels. A collection of interviews from the ABC Archives with Australian authors about their most significant work. In 2007 Alexis Wright won the Miles Franklin Award for her epic novel Carpentaria, set in and around the mythical town of Desperance in Queensland’s Gulf Country.
Introducing Classic Australian Novels. A collection of interviews from the ABC Archives with Australian authors about their most significant work. In True History of the Kelly Gang Peter Carey took a mythic Australian story and turned it into a Booker Prize winning novel.
Introducing Classic Australian Novels. A collection of interviews from the ABC Archives with Australian authors about their most significant work. With his first two novels Richard Flanagan had already garnered a reputation as great author. But then in 2001 the Tasmanian writer consolidated his literary reputation, and his gift for great titles, with Gould's Book of Fish.
Introducing Classic Australian Novels. A collection of interviews from the ABC Archives with Australian authors about their most significant work. The politics and philosophy of tourism are at the core of Michelle de Kretser’s book Questions of Travel which charts the lives of two characters living worlds apart.
Introducing Classic Australian Novels. A collection of interviews from the ABC Archives with Australian authors about their most significant work. Monkey Grip ushered in a new voice in Australian Literature. Released in 1977 it was Helen Garner’s first novel and the first time Australians had read such a frank account of bohemian life in Melbourne's inner north.
Introducing Classic Australian Novels. A collection of interviews from the ABC Archives with Australian authors about their most significant work. That Deadman Dance was published in 2010 and is the third novel from Miles Franklin winner Kim Scott. Set in the Western Australian whaling port of Albany in the early 1800's it's an exploration of culture, first impressions, and the so called 'friendly frontier'.
Introducing Classic Australian Novels. A collection of interviews from the ABC Archives with Australian authors about their most significant work. Kate Grenville's The Secret River released in 2005 became an instant classic, inspiring a sequel, a television series, and a theatre production.
Reading recommendations from writers Emily Gale and Tristan Bancks (both of whom write for both teens and younger readers); and the Books That Made Us Youth Fiction Prize. (Part 2 of our best reads recommendation on 10 December)
On Christos Tsiolkas' 7 ½: A Novel, Violet Kupersmith's Build your House Around my Body and Jason Mott's Hell of a Book with comedian and writer Matt Okine and writer and producer Sheila Ngọc Phạm
Reading Polish Nobel Prize winning author Olga Tokarczuk's The Books of Jacob and Marisa Fazio's novella Piazza Garibaldi with writers Amanda Lohrey and Bram Presser; and novelist and essayist Ann Patchett on These Precious Days and the bookshelf that shaped her
Join us for a road trip book club, with actor and director Jeremy Sims and novelist and academic Intan Paramaditha. Travel on foot, in a car, on a train, into both ravaged and familiar landscapes
Reading Michelle de Kretser's Scary Monsters, Richard Powers' Bewilderment and Jay Kristoff's Empire of the Vampire with guest reader reviewers food writer Adam Liaw and novelist Hannah Kent
Reading Hannah Kent's much-anticipated new novel, Devotion, Katie Kitamura's Intimacies and Mary Lawson's A Town Called Solace, with guest reader reviewers actor Geraldine Hakewill and novelist Graeme Simsion
Reading Emily Bitto's Wild Abandon, Karl Ove Knausgaard's The Morning Star and Elizabeth Strout's Oh William! with musician Tim Rogers and novelist Pip Williams.
Reading Jonathan Franzen's novel Crossroads and Ruth Ozeki's The Book of Form and Emptiness, with actor Marta Dusseldorp and writer and provocateur John Safran
Smalltown England in the 1830s and a city within a city in the early 1960s: stories of lives and loves, dramas and small moments well told.
Reading Colson Whitehead's Harlem Shuffle and George Eliot's Middlemarch with poet Miles Merrill and literary academic Margaret Harris
On the significance of English writer D H Lawrence and Alison MacLeod's novel, Tenderness; and reading Australian novels Bodies of Light by Jennifer Down and Hannah Bent's When Things Are Alive they Hum; with guests Patrick Carey and Assoc Prof Fiona Morrison
On Colm Tóibín's The Magician (a fictionalised life of Nobel Prize winning author, Thomas Mann), Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Velvet Was the Night and Sarah Bailey's The Housemate with guests Paige Clark and Mark Sutton
Novelist J P Pomare and memoirist Ianto Ware join Kate and Cassie, and the books discussed today are Sally Rooney's Beautiful World, Where Are You, Paula Hawkins' A Slow Fire Burning and Pascal Janovjak's The Rome Zoo
Why is memory such a potent theme in fiction? On Jessica Anderson's Tirra Lirra by the River and Hugh Breakey's The Beautiful Fall, with guests - novelists both - Robert Lukins and Alison Booth
What does it mean to read like an Australian writer? Insights from writers Belinda Castles, Debra Adelaide and Nicholas Jose. Also, crime writer Will Dean on the dark fairytale woods of Sweden and the Bookshelf that Made Him; and a preview of The Big Weekend of Books
Boastful, funny, clever, skilled and much maligned: meet Geoffrey Chaucer's Wife of Bath, both his fourteenth-century invention and a fresh remaking of her in Karen Brooks' The Good Wife of Bath. Also, the feelgood book of the year, with Sarah Winman's Still Life. Mediaeval literature specialist Louise D'Arcens and novelist Robert Gott join Kate for a lively discussion.
Broadcaster and journalist Melanie Tait joins Kate to talk wild empathy, in Charlotte McConaghy's Once There Were Wolves. There are also reviews of Jennifer Mills' The Airways and Jessie Greengrass's The High House; the Bookshelf that Made English writer Sunjeev Sahota, and new poetry from Luke Currie-Richardson. (Cassie is away this week.)
Kate and Cassie join guests Larissa Behrendt and Tiger Webb as Irish writer John Boyne takes on the Twittersphere; Nick Earls spins a tale that takes us from Vienna during the Napoleonic Wars through Russia in 1916 and on to contemporary Alaska and Hong Kong; and in Christine Mangan’s Palace of the Drowned we're in a wet and spooky Venice.
Books writer Nicole Abadee and theatre writer Tom Wright join Kate and Cassie to read Amanda Lohrey's The Labyrinth, winner of the 2021 Miles Franklin Literary Award, as well as the other five books on the award's shortlist
Writers Rashida Murphy (The Historian's Daughter) and Michael Winkler (Grimmish) join Kate and Cassie as they read and review Mark Brandi's The Others, Sunjeev Sahota's China Room and Patrick McGrath's Last Days in Cleaver Square
Writers Kathryn Heyman and Aoife Clifford join Cassie and Kate as they discuss the tawdry and damaged in James Ellroy's Widespread Panic and Lisa Taddeo's Animal; while there's ice cold drama and poetry in Jon McGregor's Lean Fall Stand
Extended interviews by Kate Evans with writers Taylor Jenkins Reid (Malibu Rising and Daisy Jones and the Six) and Dawnie Walton (The Final Revival of Opal and Nev), following on from the recent music-and-fiction Book Club, and finding the 'bookshelf that made me' for both these writers
Double J's Zan Rowe and music journalist and novelist Barry Divola join Kate and Cassie as they talk music in books, focusing on Dawnie Walton's The Final Revival of Opal and Nev and Patti Smith's Just Kids (with bookish recommendations from musicians Amy Shark, Robert Forster and Emma Swift)
Travel to places both real and imagined with writers Heather Rose, Maxine Beneba Clarke, Richard Fidler and Tegan Bennett Daylight, in conversation with Kate Evans onstage at the Sydney Writers Festival
Kate and Cassie are joined this week by poet and music writer Mark Mordue, singer-songwriter Darren Hanlon and Music Show colleague Andrew Ford; and the books discussed are Taylor Jenkins Reid's Malibu Rising, Kate Sawyer's The Stranding and Helen Oyeyemi's Peaces - with a side serving of music on the page.
Novelist Meg Mason (Sorrow and Bliss) and journalist Michael Dulaney join Cassie and Kate as they discuss Briohny Doyle's Echolalia and Angelike Schrobsdorff's You Are Not Like Other Mothers; and English writer Elizabeth MacNeal reveals the books and ideas that shaped Circus of Wonders
Kate and Cassie are joined by reviewer Dr Ruth Wilson, whose PhD on Jane Austen and education was awarded last year, when she was 88 years old. Together, they read Joan Silber's Secrets of Happiness and Alice Pung's One Hundred Days
Crime writer Michel Robotham and playwright Joanna Murray Smith join Kate and Cassie to discuss the work of Patricia Highsmith, high priestess of dark psychological thrillers. With cameos by Highsmith herself, her biographer Richard Bradford, crime writer and singer Jane Clifton, and featuring critiques from members of the ABC Book Club Facebook Group
Ahead of this week's RN Book Club on Patricia Highsmith, her biographer Richard Bradford answers questions from readers and members of the ABC Book Club Facebook Group. An intriguing woman, and a writer who places you inside the perspective of her dark and disquieting characters
Kate and Cassie read Michael Mohammed Ahmad's The Other Half of You, Cassandra Austin's Like Mother and Suyi Davies Okungbowa's Son of the Storm with writers Monica Dux and Eugen Bacon
Ern Malley was the poet at the centre of Australia's most famous literary hoaxes: an invented poet, supposedly discovered by his sister, Ethel. Well, Ethel has been revived and rediscovered, made solid by the novelist Stephen Orr in his Sincerely, Ethel Malley. Kate and Cassie are joined by Debra Oswald and Gavin Williams as they read this and new novels by Jhumpa Lahiri and Imbolo Mbue
Writer and translator Subhash Jaireth tracks his life through both countries and bookshelves, from India to the (then) Soviet Union and onto Australia, with many countries and literary traditions in between. He speaks to Kate Evans about where reading and books have taken him.
Writer Krissy Kneen and podcaster Mike Williams join Cassie and Kate as they discuss Rahul Raina's How to Kidnap the Rich, Jamie Marina Lau's Gunk Baby and Jasper Gibson's The Octopus Man. An Indian satire, a contemporary not-quite-dystopian shopping centre, and following the voice of a tentacled deity. Three new works of fiction.
India's first woman lawyer practiced, against the odds, in the 1920s. Novelist Sujata Massey used that woman as inspiration for her fictional character, Perveen Mistry, amateur sleuth in a country bursting with change. Sujata Massey speaks to Kate Evans about her own writing and the bookshelf that shaped her. Reading recommendations abound.
Novelist Bram Presser and comparative literature academic Rebecca Suter join Kate and Cassie to talk about Kazuo Ishiguro's latest novel, Klara and the Sun, in light of all his other novels. And yes, the quality of light, shining down on this Artificial Friend - Robot Girl - is one of the many things at stake in this bookish discussion
It's been a long time since Kate and Cassie have seen either writers or readers in person, but here we all are . . .
Fighting aliens with bows arrows, reading the Encyclopedia Brittanica, and why he's drawn to historical fiction. Former Governor General Peter Cosgrove speaks to Kate Evans about books, reading, history, political biography and writing memoir
Kate and Cassie discuss Patricia Lockwood's No One is Talking About This, Peace Adzo Medie's His Only Wife and Marco Missiroli's Fidelity with writer Sefakor Zikpi and journalist Penelope Green, while Jacqueline Maley reflects on the books that sit beside her own new novel, The Truth About Her
Maria Dahvana Headley knows how to write - and read - monsters. And in doing both she remakes them, as she explains to Kate Evans
En liten tjänst av I'm With Friends. Finns även på engelska.